Nikon For Newbies

Nikon COOLPIX S3000 : No Flashy Tricks

By Aaron Toh

The Nikon COOLPIX S3000 compact camera will take care of all your photography needs.

At a mere 116 grams and about the size of a standard name card carrier, the Nikon COOLPIX S3000 is one of smallest compact cameras ever to enter the market.

You’ll be able to slot it into your pants pocket and forget it’s there. The camera fits your hand perfectly and its button placement is comfortable whether you are taking self-portraits or otherwise.

Definitely designed with casual photography in mind, the point-and-shoot S3000 manages to get exposures spot-on most of the time. Even when pointed directly at a sliver of sun peeking from behind a swirl of clouds, the camera was able to adjust its exposure to give a near-perfect shot within milliseconds.

The camera has a wide range of shooting modes (17 to be exact) from standard modes like landscape and portrait, to unexpected ones like the fireworks mode, which employs a 4-second shutter speed to capture split-second fireworks bursts.

This caters well to the novice photographer who doesn’t want to deal with troublesome apertures and shutter speeds. Granted, 17 shooting modes might be overkill, but it’s nice to have options.

I even briefly thought about ditching my Nikon D5000 DSLR for this compact camera. After a long time of dealing with the hassle of manually adjusting a DSLR, to just point and snap is wonderfully refreshing.

However, as green as the grass may seem on the other side, there are a few limitations.

For starters, portrait shots with the sky as the background are not handled that well. The camera can either focus on the subject’s face and completely overexpose the sky, or get the sky just right and make the face nothing but a mass of shadows.

Speaking of focus – getting a clear shot is a tad troublesome with the S3000. Its focusing mechanism can be unpredictable, resulting in blurry images. A word of caution about unstable hands – at a resolution of 12 megapixels, a shot that seems perfect on the camera’s 2.7-inch screen often has a touch of shakiness when seen on the computer.

The camera’s 4X optical zoom is functional at best, while its 4X digital zoom should not be used under any circumstances. Using the digital zoom will result in a picture that is indecipherably grainy and shaky.

This camera is pretty fair for taking self-portraits (read: cam-whoring) and casual snapshots of friends to put on Facebook – which doesn’t really care for the quality of your photos, just their content, but that’s about it.

One thing I was impressed by was the S3000’s video quality. It automatically adjusts its focus and exposure, ensuring that the image is nearly always clear and fairly well lit – pretty good for a camera of such miniscule size.

The only gripe to be made of the camera’s video-taking capability is sound quality. With only one microphone situated under the lens, the sound is often scratchy and hard to interpret.

All in all, this is your typical compact digital camera, with few outstanding qualities, and it’s good value at just $279.

Nikon D3000: You Get What You Pay For

By Jeremy Lo

Nikon’s newest entry level DSLR, the D3000, is meant for beginners and is a great introduction to DSLRs.

Until last year, Nikon’s entry level DSLRs consisted of the D40, D60 and the D5000. In a time where camera technology advances at such a rate that we’ve progressed from the 6 megapixels of the D40 to the whopping 24 megapixels of the Nikon D3X in just under 2 years, Nikon finally decided it was time for a revamp.

Enter the D3000.

Keeping the entry-level market in mind, the Nikon D3000 is inexpensive at a mere $759 (with an 18-55mm VR kit lens). It’s small and lightweight, looks and feels almost identical to the now-discontinued D40, but boasts many upgrades and new features to bring it up-to-date with the current standards of DSLRs.

The improvements include a higher resolution of 10.2 megapixels, a more effective autofocus (AF) system with 11 AF points, allowing you to choose specific areas in the frame to focus on, a larger 3-inch screen, continuous shooting at 3 frames-per-second (fps) and in-camera photo editing.

However, the most prominent change would be the all-new Guide Mode, introducing those new to DSLR photography through a user-friendly mode.

By setting the camera mode to “GUIDE”, 3 options appear on the LCD screen, “Shoot”, “View/Delete” and “Set up”. Going into each option will bring up a set of actions you may want to perform, and the camera’s settings will change accordingly.

For example, going into the “Shoot” menu’s “Easy Operation” category displays a list of scenarios in which you might want to photograph. Choosing the “Close-ups” option sends the camera into macro mode for you. Simple.

There are also options for “Advanced operation”, in which the camera walks you through the various settings required to, for example, capture a fast moving subject by setting a high shutter speed.

You’ll be glad to know that like most Nikons, autofocus on the D3000 is speedy and accurate, although it tends to take a while longer in poor lighting.

The light metering is also good, producing consistently exposed photographs. Photographs come out sharp and clear with vivid colours, provided that the conditions are good.

This is where the Nikon D3000 falls short. In low lighting, users will be forced to increase the camera’s ISO sensitivity rating to capture sharp photographs better, and high ISO performance is the D3000’s Achilles’ heel.

It has a limited ISO range, extending from ISO100 to 1600, with a Hi1 option (ISO3200). Image quality starts to degrade at ISO800, with grain starting showing. If you need to bump up the ISO more, the next option would be ISO1600. At that level of sensitivity, image quality suffers, but no worse than any other cameras that are competing in the same market.

The other pitfall of the D3000 is it’s slow processing speed. After snapping a photograph, I found myself staring at the LCD screen for 3 seconds waiting for the photo to show up.

This slowness seems to be attributed to Nikon’s Active D-lighting, a feature allowing the camera to retain more detail in dark shadows and bright highlights.

The problem is, the system works fine on other Nikon cameras, but the D3000 doesn’t seem to be able to handle it as well. Turning off Active D-Lighting solves the problem, but it still feels sluggish.

Overall, the Nikon D3000 is a decent camera for beginners to delve into the world of DSLR photography without breaking their bank accounts and the “Guide” mode is plenty useful.

*Disclaimer: All information is based on reviewers’ experience and may vary accordingly.

Nikon is having a promotion for these 2 models during the Great Singapore Sale from 27 May 2010 to 30 June 2010 as follows:

Nikon COOLPIX S3000: $279

Freebies:

• 8GB SD Card
• Cleaning Kit
• Camera Case
• Digipod
• Umbrella
• Battery
• LCD Pad

Colors available: Black, Champagne Silver, Red, Blue, Orange, Magenta, Purple, Green

D3000 Kit (With AF-S DX NIKKOR 18-55mm VR lens): S$888.

Freebies:

• 8GB SD Card
• Nikon Bag
• Cleaning Kit
• Tripod
• LCD Pad
• Extra Battery

*Purchase of D3000 Kit entitles customers to purchase a Manfrotto Monopod & Pro Kata Bag at only $88 (U.P $288)

All authorised dealers can be found here: http://nikon.com.sg/dealers.php