Timing & Performance

Overall the 8800's performance wasn't that much different to the 8700 we reviewed back in April this year. Compared to other prosumer eight megapixel models the startup time is at the slower end of the scale at around three seconds (along with the 8700, 8400 and Canon Pro1). Auto focus proved to be quick at wide angle but progressively slower towards telephoto to the extent that the camera can 'hunt' for up to four seconds in moderate to low light and full telephoto. Off to shot taken suffers because of the slow startup and shot to shot times were slow (other prosumer eight megapixel digital cameras manage between 1 and 1.5 seconds). We were particularly disappointed by the cameras poor CF write speed which can leave you waiting for it to complete before being able to switch to play mode or enter the menu (this oddly slower than the 8400).

Timing Notes

All times calculated as an average of three operations. Unless otherwise stated all timings were made on a 3264 x 2448 Fine JPEG image (approx. 2,600 KB per image).

Media used for these tests

• 1 GB SanDisk Extreme III CF card (Type I)
• 1 GB Lexar Pro 80x CF card (Type I)

Lag Timing Definitions

Half-press Lag (0->S1) Many digital camera users prime the AF and AE systems on their camera by half-pressing the shutter release. This is the amount of time between a half-press of the shutter release and the camera indicating an auto focus & auto exposure lock on the LCD monitor / viewfinder (ready to shoot).	(Prime AF/AE)
Half to Full-press Lag (S1->S2) The amount of time it takes from a full depression of the shutter release button (assuming you have already primed the camera with a half-press) to the image being taken.	(Take shot, AF/AE primed)
Full-press Lag (0->S2) The amount of time it takes from a full depression of the shutter release button (without performing a half-press of the shutter release beforehand) to the image being taken. This is more representative of the use of the camera in a spur of the moment 'point and shoot' situation.	(Take shot, AF/AE not primed)

Continuous mode

The tables below show the results of our continuous shooting test, indicating the actual frame rate along with maximum number of frames and how long you would have to wait after taking the maximum number of frames before you could take another shot. Media used for these tests was a 1 GB Lexar Pro 80x CF card. Shutter speed was kept above 1/250 sec during these tests.

Continuous Low speed

Continuous High speed

From a shooting speed point of view the 8800 pretty much matches its specified 1.2 and 2.3 fps in the two continuous modes. The biggest surprised was just how long it took the camera to write a full burst of images, especially in low speed mode. It appears that the 8800 has a serious bottleneck which means that if you have a large number of images buffered you can expect to wait quite a while before they've all been written away (3.5 minutes for a full burst of 3 mp images). Surprisingly the 8800 is noticeably slower than the 8400 at writing the burst.

File Write / Display and Sizes

Timings shown below are the time taken for the camera to process and "flush" the image out to the storage card, the timer was started as soon as the shutter release was pressed and stopped when the CF activity indicator disappears. This means the timings also include the cameras processing time and as such are more representative of the actual time to "complete the task".

Display vs. Load time

In play mode the 8800 displays a 'rough' version of the image instantly (this is in fact a small thumbnail from the image header). If you look closely you can see it replace this rough image with a more detailed image once it has loaded the image from the CF card. You can not magnify the image until it has been loaded. The timings below represent the time for the camera to load the image from the CF card, this does affect your ability to browse to the next image.

Media used for these tests

• 1 GB SanDisk Extreme III CF card (Type I)
• 1 GB Lexar Pro 80x CF card (Type I)

File sizes

With record review off the 8800 returns to its live view approximately 1.7 seconds after pressing the shutter release (3 seconds with record review on or about 8 seconds for RAW). The write times above are for the camera to complete writing in the background. We were very surprised to witness such different performance here than we saw from the 8400. Indeed the 8800 takes about 50% longer than the 8400 to write a JPEG Fine image (70% longer for RAW). As all other performance metrics between the two cameras are virtually identical I can see no other explanation (however unlikely) than the 8800 using an older CF interface than the 8400.

Low Light Auto Focus

This test is designed to measure the minimum amount of light under which the camera can still focus. The focus target is our lens distortion test chart (shown here on the right), camera is positioned exactly 2 m (6.6 ft) away.

Light levels are gradually dropped until the camera can no longer focus. This is carried out at both wide angle and telephoto zoom positions (as more light reaches the focusing systems with a larger aperture).

Unlike the 8700 which had its AF assist lamp inside the pop-up flash unit the 8800's is on the body of the camera, this means you no longer have to pop the flash up for AF assist. One surprise however was that you can't manually disable it except by selecting certain scene modes. Despite its lamp the 8800 still required a little ambient light at wide angle before it could focus lock, at telephoto it needed more still.

Battery life

We ran the camera through our new battery life test. This test is designed to be fair and comparative to each camera and battery type:

• Take 4 shots without flash
• Wait 2 minutes (50% of the time powering the camera off)
• Take 1 shot with flash
• Wait 1 minute
• Repeat

Batteries are fully discharged and recharged before the test and all cameras were reset to their factory default settings. Here are the results:

The 8800 lasted just about three and a half hours, or 45 minutes longer than its older brother the Coolpix 8700 with its 5.0 Wh EN-EL1 battery. The 8400 managed about fourty minutes longer, we assume the 8800's VR system drained a little more power. It's a very respectable performance from such a compact battery and should mean that most owners will need just one battery.