At initial glance, a Nikon Coolpix A looks like a typical, if rather retro, compress camera. But, it indeed contains a vast APS-C sensor, a same stretch found in many DSLRs. It also boasts a comparatively rapid f/2.8 18.5-mm bound lens, that should capacitate it to take photographs rivaling a peculiarity of many bigger cameras. After removing a brief pre-release hands-on with a camera, we’ve now had a possibility to spend some peculiarity time with it, to see if it lives adult to a potential.
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A integrate of years ago this would have been a niche product, yet other large-sensor fixed-lens cameras like a Fujifilm X100 series, a Leica X2 and a Sigma DP Merrills have shown there’s a vast marketplace out there. Arguably, smartphones have also played a partial in formulating this marketplace as people have got used to sharpened with a bound focal length, rather than awaiting and perfectionist zooms.
Aimed during enthusiasts, professionals, and DSLR users who wish to transport light, a reward compress seems to concentration on doing a few things good rather than perplexing to do everything. It’s clearly been designed to prioritize picture quality, primer controls and portability. In my tests we found that on some occasions it was a suitable deputy for my smartphone camera, and on others it took on a duties of my DSLR.
Specs
- 16 megapixels
- DX-format CMOS sensor
- No visual low-pass filter
- 18.5-mm f/2.8 lens (28-mm homogeneous in 35-mm format)
- 3-inch 921k-dot LCD monitor
- Magnesium amalgamate tip cover
- 4 frames per second (fps)
- Full HD video
- ISO 100-6400
For a some-more minute run-through of a specs, check out a news essay about a recover of a Nikon Coolpix A.
Design and Construction
The Nikon Coolpix A is by no means a vast camera, in fact it’s usually marginally incomparable than a customary compact. This is utterly an engineering attainment when we cruise how many incomparable a sensor is than that of a smaller rivals. It houses an APS-C DX-format (23.6 x 15.6 mm) CMOS sensor compared to a 2/3-inch (8.8 x 6.6 mm) ones in higher-end compacts, and a some-more common 1/1.7-inch (7.6 x 5.7 mm) sensor of many other smaller cameras.
That said, a camera feels reassuringly complicated and plain when we collect it adult – yet not so many that it becomes worried when unresolved around your neck. While a camera also feels easily offset in a hand, my usually dispute would be that a reason bar can spin worried if holding it for prolonged durations of time.
The blueprint of a controls will be mostly informed to Nikon DSLR shooters. These embody pleasingly appreciative mode and control dials that have been cut from metal. With good detailing around a sides, they feel like a good enrich to a magnesium amalgamate tip cover. I’ve never been a fan of cheap-feeling cosmetic buttons adhering out of a peculiarity steel finish, so this courtesy to fact is unequivocally many welcome.
Turning a camera on, a lens tub extends slightly, yet this being a bound 18.5-mm lens, it’s not like branch on a camera with a vast wizz and a transformation is minimal, maybe a centimeter or so. It also happens unequivocally quickly. There’s a control ring around a lens for primer focus, and concentration settings (AF, macro and manual) are tranquil by a switch on a side of a camera.
While there’s a hotshoe on a tip of a camera for an outmost flash, there’s also a rather sudden pop-up flash. Personally, I’d have favourite to see this wanting and an visual viewfinder enclosed in a place. we know there’s an discretionary visual viewfinder accessible for a camera, yet during US$450 this doesn’t come inexpensive and adds substantial unwieldy bulk to a device.
Use and Controls
After branch it on, a Nikon Coolpix A can be prepared to fire unequivocally quickly, mostly before we are. It is as discerning as any non-DSLR I’ve used, that is a good thing for a camera that will many substantially be bought by people who are used to a speed and responsiveness of DSLRs.
As mentioned previously, there are copiousness of primer controls on a Coolpix A and it will be a informed sharpened knowledge for Nikon shooters. On a tip of a camera, a shiver symbol is assimilated by a authority and mode dial. The mode dial gives entrance to PASM (Program, Aperture priority, Shutter priority, and Manual) options as good as Auto, Scene and dual user options, that are roughly adequate to make D800 and D4 users jealous.
Using a symbol press and dial spin method, many settings can be discerning accessed and changed. The many vivid counterbalance to this is accessing film recording mode (more on that later). The GUI looks good on a 3-inch LCD with 921,000 dots, and will also be informed to prior Nikon users, yet it could be harder for new users to navigate. It’s not as discerning as that on something like a Sony RX100, yet gets a pursuit finished ideally well.
A control ring around a lens tub allows users to concentration manually, yet since a lens tab is so small, it can feel a tiny fiddly in operation and isn’t as well-spoken as that of peculiarity DSLR lenses. It’s also value observant that a camera forgets a primer concentration environment and defaults to forever when powered down and behind on again. This could be frustrating if you’re a penetrating section focuser.
Using a camera, we again felt myself wishing for an visual viewfinder. If we was to buy this camera, it would positively be with a discretionary DF-CP1 viewfinder, (or a third celebration alternative). As such we was also rather unhappy that we couldn’t find a approach of branch a LCD off, rather than usually dimming it. This means that if adding a hotshoe viewfinder, a LCD will still be intense opposite your cheek.
The usually other rather disastrous emanate we ran into regulating a camera was that it feels like it requires dual hands to reason and operate. Where a matching Ricoh GR is designed to be used in one hand, a Nikon Coolpix A handles a lot some-more like a DSLR.
Autofocus
While I’ve mentioned that a Nikon Coolpix A can be prepared to fire in double-quick time, it’s a contrition a autofocus doesn’t utterly live adult to this speediness. That’s not to contend it’s slow, in fact it’s discerning for this form of camera, it’s usually that if you’re entrance from a DSLR you’ll notice a difference.
The autofocus on a Nikon Coolpix A is indeed formally discerning in many situations, and this isn’t going to be a current forgive for blank all yet a briefest of shots. It seems to perform good in many lighting conditions, yet is rather slower in darker situations, and on a whole does so though extreme hunting.
Subject-tracking AF does a pursuit of gripping relocating subjects in focus, and it achieved improved than we approaching when total with a detonate speed sharpened of 4 fps. Face approval is another concentration mode that achieved good and is a accessible further to have in your sharpened arsenal.
In ubiquitous autofocus mode, a camera has a smallest concentration stretch of 50 cm (1 ft, 8 in), yet in macro mode this is reduced to 10 cm (4 in) and a camera still performs well. This means we can get tighten adequate to that juicy cut of cake for holding tributary food shots.
Image Quality
There’s positively no encountering a peculiarity of images that this tiny camera can produce, as they are utterly simply gorgeous. Thanks to that vast DX-format sensor, there is no revelation them detached from an APS-C DSLR with a good peculiarity lens on it. And given they’re entrance from a camera that can lay in a coupler pocket, that’s unequivocally observant something.
In further to sharpened JPEGs, a Nikon Coolpix A can spin out 14-bit RAW files that are many some-more forgiving in post processing. There’s also a choice to perform in-camera NEF (RAW) estimate to get your images looking their best before exporting them to a computer. Because Nikon wanting a visual low-pass filter, images are pronounced to describe sum better, yet unless you’re a pixel-peeper you’re doubtful to notice a difference.
Sixteen megapixels lay easily on an APS-C sized sensor and are generally some-more than adequate – unless you’re wanting to stand images heavily – to give minute images that can be printed during vast sizes. The larger-than-usual sensor also means a camera is able of behaving improved during low light than equally-sized counterparts, with minimal sound display adult until we strech aloft ISO settings.
The above picture shows 100 percent crops from a same picture shot during a operation of ISOs. While we can see tiny amounts of sound display adult from ISO 640, remember this is display 100 percent crops. Personally, we would happily dial adult to ISO 1600 though worrying unduly about negatively impacting an image. ISO 3200 and even 64000 can furnish excusable images in conditions in that it would formerly not have been value removing your camera out.
Lens
The lens on a Nikon Coolpix A is presumably a some-more argumentative aspect of a camera. The bound 18.5-mm lens gives an homogeneous of 28-mm in 35-mm format, that is deliberate by many to be an in-between focal length. Some transport photographers will disagree it’s too wide, and would cite a some-more common 35-mm lens (in 35-mm format) while others contend it’s not far-reaching adequate for landscapes.
Personally, we don’t dislike a focal length. we mostly fire with a 28-mm on my full support DSLR, so it felt familiar. And since this lens has has been specifically designed for a camera and optimized for a DX-format CMOS sensor, it performs unequivocally good indeed. Constructed of 7 elements in 5 groups, it is unequivocally pointy and suffers minimal distortion. Using a seven-blade iris diaphragm, images shot with wider apertures can underline a appreciative credentials blur.
This brings me onto another common critique of a Coolpix A, that a lens is usually f/2.8. Some people would have favourite a lens to have been f/2 or even f/1.8 (allowing for shallower abyss of margin and use in reduce light situations). Had a camera featured a 35-mm or 50-mm homogeneous lens, we would have concluded that a faster lens would have been a improved choice. But during 28-mm equivalent, we consider a f/2.8 works excellent and a stretch trade-off of a faster lens could have done a camera too big.
Video
I roughly didn’t exam a film recording on a Nikon Coolpix A, not since of any precisionist photography tendencies yet because, as mentioned earlier, accessing film mode isn’t as easy as it could be. There’s no dedicated earthy entrance to it – it’s buried in a menu – and as a outcome we unequivocally scarcely forgot about it altogether.
In a finish we set adult a front duty symbol to give me faster entrance to it around sharpened recover modes. While a camera is able of sharpened full HD video during 30/25/24 fps and has built-in stereo microphones, there’s no audio submit and we privately found a fixed-lens many some-more of a limitation for film recording than sharpened stills.
Summary
- Large sensor stretch
- High build quality
- Nikkor lens is pointy and discerning
- Shoots RAW or JPEG
- Big camera cinema out of a pocketable camera
- Expensive when compared to rivals
- Lack of visual viewfinder
- Fixed 18.5-mm lens could be an emanate for some
If you’ve got vast adequate pockets – both in terms of income and earthy space – a $1,100 Nikon Coolpix A could be a camera for you. It’s usually transposed a Sony RX100 as my favorite pocketable compress digital camera. But it’s not a camera for everyone. It has a bound lens, and a length of that bound lens means that a camera has a unequivocally specific audience.
If you’re partial of that aim market, in that we don’t mind a bound 28-mm homogeneous lens, a Coolpix A can be surprisingly versatile. Its dissimilar styling gives it apparent interest as a transport sharpened camera, yet it’s also good for someone who values picture peculiarity and wants to transport light. The far-reaching angle lens also creates a camera good for sharpened family gatherings, indoors, or even landscapes.
Things that unequivocally tender me about a camera enclosed a stout build quality, a understated styling, and a vast one: that big-camera picture quality. Looking behind during images, we unequivocally wouldn’t know either they’d been taken on this or a extremely incomparable DSLR.
My usually genuine beating with a Coolpix A was a autofocus speed, that unequivocally can’t be that many of a censure as it is still some-more than adequate as it is. That’s not to contend that a camera is differently perfect. A stand mode giving a 35-mm homogeneous would have been good (like a Ricoh GR) and that could been done even some-more useful with a incomparable resolution. There’s also a miss of built-in visual viewfinder, yet we won’t go into that again.
Obvious comparisons can be done with a Fujifilm X100s (which has a 35-mm homogeneous lens and some-more earthy controls, yet is bigger) and a Ricoh GR (which has roughly matching specs and a smaller cost tag). And if we are looking during a Coolpix A afterwards we competence have also looked during a Leica X2, a Sigma DP Merrills and a full-frame Sony RX1.
All in all, a Nikon Coolpix A is a good camera: a vast sensor in a compress physique and with a good peculiarity lens. For me, a peculiarity of a bound lens binds some-more interest than a zoom, nonetheless a 35-mm would fit me better. But is it value a $1,100 seeking price? Only we can answer that.
Product page: Nikon Coolpix A
Article source: http://www.indybay.org/newsitems/2012/01/29/18706019.php
Review: Nikon Coolpix A
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