It's upsad to those Nikon fans, everything except colour (not rich
enough, sometimes off & toward cool) is fine in my 950. To correct one
picture is OK, how about hundreds of photos after holiday you need to
correct in photoshop, if all photo need the same amount of correction,
it's fine, you can do batch editing using the same user defined curve or
settings, but if each need different degree of correction, you must get
an headache. If other DC can do it, why not 950?
Saying that other DC's "can do it" is misleading though.
Yes, the Kodak (to pick on the most often cited example) can
produce warm saturated colors that are often very visually appealing,
especially when shooting people or typical scenes.
I don't actually care for shooting people and I often
find myself in very difficult lighting shooting strange subjects.
I had two Kodak DCs before the Nikon and some of the things they do
in camera simply cannot be undone in post processing.
My second Kodak couldn't take a picture with snow in it.
Period. Couldn't do it. Bizarre splots of maxed out color where it
should have been white. I'd drop the EV as low as it could go
and it still screwed it up beyond repair. A shot with a lot of of
smooth blue sky in it, became banded overexposed white. I couldn't
fix that. It did people great though. Nice skin tones, good
flash, but to pull it off it sacrificed detail in the brightest
and darkest areas of the photo.
We can debate this all day but often the Nikon produces
very accurate, albeit often less appealing colors, but it
never sacrifices detail to do it. And it won't over
expose something unintentionally like both my Kodaks did
when they warmed up the colors. I can shoot a smooth
expanse of blue sky, or white clouds, or even snow
without any strange artifacts. I can pull details out of
shadows that simply weren't there in my Kodaks.
Does it take more work to shoot with the Nikon? Yes, absolutely.
I've never learned more about photography than when I
started using the CP950. However, if I want ALL my holiday photos
to come out of the camera with warm non-blue tones, a
couple button pushes before each sequence of shots and
my WB will be "perfect", or at least very Kodak-like.
The problem is the WB is
off too much, out of the tolerable range of the naked eye.
We'll have to agree to disagree there. I've stood and looked
at a bluish print in front of the same scene where I took
the shot and could see that what my eyes at first perceived as just
"cool" is actually blue. I SAW it. What does almost every "too blue"
photo out of the CP950 have in common? Sunlit day, photo taken in shadow.
Almost every green flash shot? Didn't set the flash white balance.
Washed out flash shots? Subject close, dark background, matrix metering.
There are exceptions, but the examples most often cited often
fall into these categories.
It's not impossible to adjust for these issues in the camera. Just don't
expect Auto to do everything the way you like it. What you like, I
may not.
I'm a Nikon
fans, do hope I'll get Nikon's response & improvement. I'll rather point
out the issue, not just defend it. Remember Nikon 950 is designed for
photograhers (not pro of course) & its price is within the current
prosumer products.
They did improve the WB. I don't know what's going on with your
camera, but there was a dramatic difference between firmware 1.0-1.1 and
1.2. 1.2 and 1.3 appear to be identical. Using Auto-WB skin tones are
generally warmer and in a scene that IS primarily lit with blue light like
the sky, the camera will compensate quite a bit more than it did before.
Mixed lighting will continue to be a challenge though. It's very
hard to get something lit with both sunlight and shadow in the same
shot and be happy with the color balance in both areas.
And if you're going to cite specific examples, then I am NOT interested
unless you shoot the same scene with two different cameras under
the same conditions. You can show me blues, and I can show you
destroyed details.
Here's the bottom line though. The CP950 is NOT, I repeat NOT
a point and shoot camera. They give you all the control you might
ever want, but they generally won't try to read your mind
and force someone like ME to conform to YOUR idea of "the
perfect color balance". I don't want your colors. That's why I
take my own photographs. With the Kodak I could not undo the damage
to the lightest and darkest areas of the photo. I couldn't fix the snow
shots. I tried and tried and tried.
Then I stopped using the camera.
When people at work ask me "What camera should I buy? I really
like the shots from your Nikon.", I don't immediately tell
them to buy the CP950. If they want to learn something about
photography, or at least aren't adverse to following a couple extra
steps like manual WB, then yes. If they want a point and shoot,
holiday photos only kind of camera, then I point them elsewhere.
I've told people to buy a Kodak before, and even a Sony Mavica, because
I felt that was best suited to their needs. The CP950 will quickly
become "obsolete" by cameras with higher resolution and higher
color depth, but I'll bet that as new cameras come down in
price they'll have fewer and fewer useful features.
The CP950 is not perfect. It's not a point and shoot camera.
It does have flaws. I don't like every shot it produces.
I'll keep it though, because it has a very nice balance of
features, performance and price. Don't expect it to ever
be just like a Kodak.
ian
