CompactFlash Compartment

The CF compartment is a vast improvement over that found on the 950, it's now positioned horizontally in the side of the hand grip, that means changing CF cards is now possible while the camera is tripod mounted. The door design is much improved and more solid than the flimsy design of the 950 (though I'm still a little worried about the robustness of that single thin plastic catch protruding from the door). However, I'm here to report that it's still not without its own new problem. There's not enough room to get your fingers in and the ejector doesn't push the card out far enough.

As you can see in this image it's often difficult to pull the card out or get your fingernail behind the lip of the CF card. The only technique I've found for extracting the card is to hook the bottom corner of the CF card with your fingernail... This may ease with time...

So all in all we have three major gripes with the new CF door (sorry Nikon you don't get away that easily): (1) It still doesn't support CF Type II (where does your market research go?) and (2) it's the wrong way around, if the slot had been aligned with the label side to the front of the camera we'd be able to easily pull the card out using the fingernail lip, (3) You still have to manually fold up the ejector button before closing the CF door, not a huge problem but it's easy to forget and it does add one more step to the action of changing the CF.

Connections

Connections on the 990 are arranged in three different places, on the right side of the camera are the major I/O connections (USB, Video out), on the front is power input (6.5V 1.9A use with Nikon EH-31 power supply) and on the left base of the lens barrel portion you will find the flash sync connector for use with SK-E900 flash bracket and various external flash units: SB-28DX, SB-28, SB-26, SB-25, SB-24, SB-22S and SB-22.

Note: the camera is supplied with a standard USB cable.

Tripod Mount

Hoorah! At last Nikon have blessed the 9xx series with a decent tripod mount. After much complaining from 950 owners over the terrible mount the 990's is a piece of perfection. Because the CF slot and battery compartment have been redesigned there's now room for a proper rubberised foot (which doubles as the rubber base of the camera) and strong metal socket, this means that the 990 is now very stable and level mounted on a tripod. However it's still not in line with the lens or focal plane which means you'll still need to use a bracket to shoot panoramas or VR bubbles accurately.

Internal Flash

Anyone else spot the larger anti-redeye lamp? Yep, it's bigger... Though that hasn't solved the redeye problem completely as the flash is still too close to the lens. Flash output from the 990 is the same as the 950, which means range tests will produce the same results as before (see later in this review). Output is stated in the manual as 9m / 30ft at ISO 100.

Supplied In the Box

Supplied in the Box (US)	Supplied in the Box (Europe)
• Nikon Coolpix 990 (purple hand grip) • Shoulder strap • Video Cable • Lens Cap & attachment string • USB Cable • 4 x AA Alkaline batteries (sigh!) • 16 MB Lexar CF card • Nikon Guide to Digital Photography (printed) • CD-ROM's: NikonView 3.0,Canto Cumulus Version 5 Demo, Altamira Group Genuine Fractals LE 2.0 for Coolpix, Internet Pictures iPIX Wizard, Software Architects Great Photo!, Reference Manual	• Nikon Coolpix 990 (red hand grip) • Shoulder strap • Video Cable • Lens Cap & attachment string • USB Cable • 4 x AA Alkaline batteries (sigh!) • 16 MB Nikon CF card • Nikon Guide to Digital Photography (printed) • CD-ROM's: NikonView 3.0, Photoshop 5.0LE, FotoStation 4.0 Full Version, Reference Manual

Accessories

Fisheye Converter FC-E8 [buy online] x0.21 (183 degree view)	Wideangle Converter WC-E24 x0.66	Wideangle Converter WC-E63 [buy online] x0.63
Telephoto Converter TC-E2 [buy online] x2.0	Telephoto Converter TC-3ED [buy online] x3.0	Slide copying adapter ES-E28 [buy online]
Remote Cord MC-EU1 [buy online] Shutter release, zoom control, Interval, Playback control, 80 cm (31.5") cord.

Other accessories (no pictures):

• Soft Case CS-E990
• AC Adapter EH-31
• Multi-Flash Bracket SK-E900 [buy online]
• TTL Multi-Flash adapter AS-10
• CompactFlash Cards
• PC Card Adapter EC-AD1 [buy online]
• Serial Cables (SC-EW3 for Windows, SC-EM3 for Macintosh)
• Slide copying adapter ES-E28 [buy online]