Reading mode: Light Dark

Nikon Coolpix 990's focusing ability in poor light?

Go to last post
D

David Garfield

New member
Messages
8
Reaction score
0
Location
London, UK
I am poised to buy a new digital camera and am as yet undecided. I recently bought a Fujifilm Finepix 4700 and took it back the following week; I didn't like it's inability to focus in poor light. The kind of photography I like to do is impromptu, almost fly-on-the-wall shots, at meetings and gatherings. Even my beloved and late-lamented old Minolta Dimage V was able to focus in very poor light (though you had to guess at the composition as it had no optical viewfinder).

So I am considering waiting for the new Nikon Coolpix 990. Although in 35mm I am a Canon man, I have always had a profound respect for Nikon's optics so I am very interested in the new beast.

My question is (yes there is one), is the Nikon Coolpix 950 quick on autofocus in poor light? I assume that if the answer is in the affirmative, then the 995 will be equally responsive or better.

David--Eagles may soar, but weasels don't get sucked into jet engines.
 
David Garfield said:
My question is (yes there is one), is the Nikon Coolpix 950 quick
on autofocus in poor light? I assume that if the answer is in the
affirmative, then the 995 will be equally responsive or better.
Click to expand...
I use the Nikon for imaging architecture and art - still stuff. I can't comment on action scenes. However I can make comments about the cameras performance for still scenes. I've had mine for nearly a year and have taken over 30,000 pictures with it of internal/externals of buildings and of various objects and artifacts. All my internals are done with a flash, so any problems are caused soley by poor focus and not through camera shake.

Personally I find the autofocus mechanism to be very annoying. In bright conditions it is probably accurate 95% of the time. In medium light conditions it is accurate about 70% of the time - sometimes it is surprisingly inaccurate.

In low light conditions its accuracy is reduced to no better than 50% and probably worse. It depends however on what you are focussing on - sometimes quite contrasty features in low light yield soft-focus while features with only a low-contrast pattern yield spot-on focus.

I note also that in low-light the camera produces many "nearly in focus" images - acceptable images but you can tell with experience that they are not the best the camera optics could deliver. It just doesn't hit the sweet-spot.

As for speed - it is fairly fast - maybe a second in low light. But whether slow or fast it's just inaccurate.

I find that I have to playback and check most of the internal shots I take and I long for the day I can get my hands on a proper digital SLR with manual focus. Autofocus is crap for my kind of photography.

Which reminds me - the manual override on the Nikon is not particularly accurate either - maybe it's my camera but I sometimes get in-focus infinity pictures of nearby objects and I also get out of focus pictures of objects I've actually measued the distance to and set the camera appropriately for. It has a mind of its own!

As for the 995 - goodness knows what they might have done to it given the other rather detrimental changes!

dd
 
I've owned 1 990 before & returned it after one week for the following reasons:

1. poor low light focus, worse than my previous 950, this may have sample variance since I tested the demo unit in the shop and it has better low light focusing.

2. it is quite noisy in image, also subjected to sample variance since some have less.

3. poor blue/yellow colour reproductio, significant pale yellow and blue tends to be purplish.

4. poor red eye problem, I've the SKE flash bracket but I hate to use it in small party gathering or camping which is so inconvenient.

Hope the 995 has improved all these troubles (the red-eye problem is known solved by the pop-up flash, well done but a little bit late, I've changed to Oly).

If you don't mind the above short comming, then 990 or 995 is a very good DC choice, quite sharp and a lot of accessories.

Francis.
Doctor Digi said:
David Garfield said:
My question is (yes there is one), is the Nikon Coolpix 950 quick
on autofocus in poor light? I assume that if the answer is in the
affirmative, then the 995 will be equally responsive or better.
Click to expand...
I use the Nikon for imaging architecture and art - still stuff. I
can't comment on action scenes. However I can make comments about
the cameras performance for still scenes. I've had mine for nearly
a year and have taken over 30,000 pictures with it of
internal/externals of buildings and of various objects and
artifacts. All my internals are done with a flash, so any problems
are caused soley by poor focus and not through camera shake.

Personally I find the autofocus mechanism to be very annoying. In
bright conditions it is probably accurate 95% of the time. In
medium light conditions it is accurate about 70% of the time -
sometimes it is surprisingly inaccurate.

In low light conditions its accuracy is reduced to no better than
50% and probably worse. It depends however on what you are
focussing on - sometimes quite contrasty features in low light
yield soft-focus while features with only a low-contrast pattern
yield spot-on focus.

I note also that in low-light the camera produces many "nearly in
focus" images - acceptable images but you can tell with experience
that they are not the best the camera optics could deliver. It just
doesn't hit the sweet-spot.

As for speed - it is fairly fast - maybe a second in low light. But
whether slow or fast it's just inaccurate.

I find that I have to playback and check most of the internal shots
I take and I long for the day I can get my hands on a proper
digital SLR with manual focus. Autofocus is crap for my kind of
photography.

Which reminds me - the manual override on the Nikon is not
particularly accurate either - maybe it's my camera but I sometimes
get in-focus infinity pictures of nearby objects and I also get out
of focus pictures of objects I've actually measued the distance to
and set the camera appropriately for. It has a mind of its own!

As for the 995 - goodness knows what they might have done to it
given the other rather detrimental changes!

dd
Click to expand...
 
Well Doc, that's very informative. I have a similar thread running in the Nikon forum and your observations seem to be borne out by many others. It's a bummer, not having IR capability on a digital camera these days. If there ever was a 'point and shoot' medium it's this.

I guess if you can take your time and use a tripod you can overcome almost anything. Trouble is that I want to take 'snapshots' of people in natural situations (no, not naturist) at meetings and in restaurants and so on. If you have to point and focus and faff about while people begin to pose for you the spontaneity is lost.

Looks like I'll have to keep searching.

David
Doctor Digi said:
I use the Nikon for imaging architecture and art - still stuff. I
can't comment on action scenes. However I can make comments about
the cameras performance for still scenes. I've had mine for nearly
a year and have taken over 30,000 pictures with it of
internal/externals of buildings and of various objects and
artifacts. All my internals are done with a flash, so any problems
are caused soley by poor focus and not through camera shake.

Personally I find the autofocus mechanism to be very annoying. In
bright conditions it is probably accurate 95% of the time. In
medium light conditions it is accurate about 70% of the time -
sometimes it is surprisingly inaccurate.

In low light conditions its accuracy is reduced to no better than
50% and probably worse. It depends however on what you are
focussing on - sometimes quite contrasty features in low light
yield soft-focus while features with only a low-contrast pattern
yield spot-on focus.

I note also that in low-light the camera produces many "nearly in
focus" images - acceptable images but you can tell with experience
that they are not the best the camera optics could deliver. It just
doesn't hit the sweet-spot.

As for speed - it is fairly fast - maybe a second in low light. But
whether slow or fast it's just inaccurate.

I find that I have to playback and check most of the internal shots
I take and I long for the day I can get my hands on a proper
digital SLR with manual focus. Autofocus is crap for my kind of
photography.

Which reminds me - the manual override on the Nikon is not
particularly accurate either - maybe it's my camera but I sometimes
get in-focus infinity pictures of nearby objects and I also get out
of focus pictures of objects I've actually measued the distance to
and set the camera appropriately for. It has a mind of its own!

As for the 995 - goodness knows what they might have done to it
given the other rather detrimental changes!

dd
Click to expand...
 
The best thing is to have a little flash light handy for very very low light,
to help the camera see the subjet.
The 990 needs contrast to focus so if the dog was 20 feet away in total

darkness I will use the flash light, or focus into something else at the same distance, and then point to the dog, or set the focus to manual...feet or meters.....

regards.

Frances.
 
total darkness you will need an external flash (more power), and setting up the camera to infinity you will be getting the shot.

Frances.
 
Instead of using a Flashligh, buy a camera that has a low light focusing aid. Many of today's cameras use a red focusing spot in low light to assist the focus (i.e. my Oly 2100).

Mike D.
Frances said:
total darkness you will need an external flash (more power), and
setting up the camera to infinity you will be getting the shot.

Frances.
Click to expand...
 
I owned a 990 for a week and returned because I could not live with its low light focus inability. I called Nikon tech support and asked if the camera was working correctly (yes) and could it use the af assist lamp on its external flash units (no), so back it went. Shame because it was a great deal at only $699 several months ago.

As I have mentioned in other posts, I think AF is the number one limitation of DCs right now, and an issue which does not get enough attention. What good is a great exposure system and 3MPs if the camera can't even take a focused picture quickly and accurately?

On the bright side, I do almost all of my portrait shooting in low light and have found the casio qv2300ux to be a good camera for low light work for me. Perhaps this quality is shared with the Casio 3MP cameras?

Here is a sample of low light work I like and create with the Casio:



My biggest problems are working at ISO 80 with no flash: subject movement and exposure. Just try telling a child to hold still for the picture! Thank god for microdrive, 'cause I can try and try again.

Good luck.

Mike
 
The lack of quick, reliable focusing seems to be the #1 complaint about digicams.

Simply put, the technology isn't there yet to make an affordable, perfectly seamless transition from 35mm to consumer level digcams. The professional digital SLRs come very close in operation but cost several fold more than the top consumer models. These consumer level cameras use a contrast algorithm to determine focus. If the subject doesn't have much contrast (solid flower all same color) or the light is dim, the camera hunts for contrast and may end up focusing on background. Thus nearly all digicams take about a second to find a focus and are less reliable in low light. The focus lamp helps but certainly is no guarantee of perfect focusing performance. This is in contrast to the 35mm phase focusing system we are used to, which is both much faster and much more reliable.

On the other hand digicams have many features that are a boon compared to their film cousins. One feature that may partially compensate is that if you get pleanty of memory (like a microdrive) you can take seemingly endless amounts of pictures and at the end of the day have more good shots than with your film couterpart. Consumer level digicams are not simply 35mm with memory, they are both more than and less than that. I think it is an issue of adjusting ones expectations.
Regards, Mike K
 
The Nikon 990 I owned for a few months absolutely sucked in its AF operation but gave excellent results when it did work ok (about 50% in low light situations). The Canon G1 I replaced it with is much better in low light AF operation but possibly slightly worse in gereral image quality.

The Canon D30 I'm now using is excellent in all respects both in image and AF operation however its a much higher price.

The 995 desperatly needs better AF operation but I have not seen anything about this in the specs released.

The 990 can be manualy set up to work better in low light situations buts its complicated menu system might not suit your needs if you a looking for quick reaction times to take a shot. The G1 is better in this area but far from perfect. The D30 is all manual and a dream to use but again has a fairly complicated menu system.
 
You must log in or register to reply here.

Keyboard shortcuts

f
Forum
m
My threads
Mobile site
About
Editorial content
Cameras & Lenses
Community
All content, design, and layout are Copyright © 1998–2025 Digital Photography Review All Rights Reserved.
Reproduction in whole or part in any form or medium without specific written permission is prohibited.
When you use DPReview links to buy products, the site may earn a commission.
©GPS Media - Guides, Products, Services.
Back
Top