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Nikon Coolpix P5000

First Impressions Review

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Physical Tour

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Design/Layout
March 10, 2007 By Emily Raymond
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Viewfinder
The Nikon P5000 has an optical zoom viewfinder that is located above the LCD screen on a protruding plane with two LED indicator lights. The viewfinder itself is very small and putting your eye up to it won’t be exceptionally comfortable because there is no real eyecup. The viewfinder isn’t perfectly accurate; none of the optical viewfinders on compact models are. It is more accurate when zoomed out, and it doesn’t "see" the bottom third of the recorded image when zoomed in. Still, its view is centered so it shouldn’t cause any major framing problems unless the subject is framed along the edges of the composition. Overall, the optical zoom viewfinder isn’t amazing, but it is better than the average compact digital camera’s optical viewfinder.
 
LCD Screen
A display button to the left of the LCD screen can turn on the display and add grid lines, shooting info, and even a live histogram. The 2.5-inch LCD screen has ample room and ample resolution at 230,000 pixels. It has a very wide viewing angle, and it can be seen above, below, right, and left. It is one of the best LCD screens we’ve seen in terms of its viewing angle. It has an anti-reflection coating that seemed to work indoors.
 
Overall, the view is nice and smooth with the great resolution, decent refresh rate, and wide viewing angles all around.
 
Flash
The built-in flash unit is located to the upper right of the lens on the front of the camera. This off-axis placement usually yields hot spots in the images, but it was hard to test this in the convention center. I did snap quite a few pictures with mixed results. I took pictures of objects such as cameras and they came out with a good range of detail. Nothing was blown out there. However, I snapped pictures of people and got the shiny forehead look that comes from cheap flash units. Though again, our impressions are based on a preproduction model. The Nikon P5000’s flash has impressive specs: It can reach from 1-26 ft 3 inches when the lens is zoomed out and 1-13 ft 1 inch when zoomed in.
 
The Nikon Coolpix P5000 has a hot shoe placed off-axis from the lens that can accept Nikon’s i-TTL Speedlight flashes. This includes the SB-400, SB-600, and SB-800. The SB-400 is the smallest of the three, and it still looks ridiculous atop the compact P5000. Looks aren’t everything though, perhaps the accessory flash’s performance will justify its strange look. That couldn’t be tested at the show though since the preproduction model didn’t work with the SB-400 flash unit at the show.
 
Users can change the flash mode with the right side of the multi-selector. Auto, Auto with Red-eye Reduction, Off, On, and Slow Sync are available. There is also a color mode option that was placed in the menu, but this is just a preproduction quirk. The camera’s specs claim that it has a red-eye fix mode, but it wasn’t available on the preproduction model. Overall, I’d say the flash wasn’t very impressive, but that could be due to the preproduction status of the show model. The flexibility in flash options is impressive.
 
Check back in the coming months when we have a full production model for a full evaluation of the P5000's flash capabilities.
 
Zoom Lens
The P5000 has a Zoom-Nikkor 3.5x optical zoom lens that is similar to those found on other P-series cameras. It measures 7.5-26.3mm, which is equivalent to 36-126mm in the 35mm format. The lens is controlled with a zoom ring that surrounds the shutter release. The control moves the lens smoothly forward when zooming in, but it backfires a bit when zooming out.
 
Constructed from 7 elements in 6 groups, the Nikon Coolpix P5000 fits in a small space. The lens itself isn’t that long considering its performance designation as a digital camera. Other cameras with similar modes and controls have longer zoom lenses but chunkier SLR shapes too.
 
Conversion lenses can be purchased to extend the focal length or widen the angle. The Nikon WC-E67 and TC-E3ED lenses can be attached as long as users also purchase a UR-E20 adapter ring.
 
Unlike most other Nikon digital cameras, the Coolpix P5000 has an optical VR image stabilization system that compensates for up to 3 shutter speed stops, according to Nikon. This has yet to be tested, of course, and extensive testing can’t be done here on the show floor in Las Vegas. This isn’t the only Coolpix with an optical system since most have just the electronic vibration reduction, but the Nikon Coolpix S50 and S50c have optical stabilization. The system made a difference in still images, and it reduced blur significantly. Surprisingly, it wasn’t as noticeable in the movie mode – perhaps because we often look at this feature on cameras with 10x lenses instead of 3.5x, so the difference is more pronounced.
 
The Zoom-Nikkor lens has maximum apertures of f/2.7-5.3, and this can be manually controlled in the manual and aperture priority modes. The aperture when the lens is zoomed out is impressive since most cameras max out at f/2.8. The tiny f/5.3 aperture when zoomed in is disappointing, though, because it won’t let much light in. The image stabilization is a plus, but the limited zoom range is disappointing. 
 

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Nikon Coolpix P5000
First Impressions Review
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Previous: Page 1

Physical Tour

Previous: Page 3

Design/Layout