Nikon Coolpix P100

Viewfinder (6.25)

Like other ultrazoom cameras, the P100 is equipped with an electronic viewfinder for eye-level shooting – it makes for better stability when shooting with a long lens. The left-of-center position on the camera body works out well, letting you hold the camera comfortably with plenty of clearance for your nose. The button to the left of the viewfinder toggles the display between the EVF and the LCD, and a dial provides diopter adjustment flexibility.

With a 230,000-dot resolution, the image is detailed enough to judge focus effectively, showing about 97% of the image to be captured. And it refreshes quickly enough to avoid the annoying stuttering and blur we sometimes find when trying to follow fast action with an EVF.

Brightness adjustment is available for the LCD, but not for the electronic viewfinder.

Display (8.30)

The 3-inch 460,000-dot LCD offers a welcome resolution boost beyond the standard 230,000-dot display, along with a bracketed mounting for additional shooting flexibility. The screen can be pulled away from the camera body, then pivoted till it’s nearly flat, with the LCD facing up or down. This is certainly useful for holding the camera overhead or down low for nose-to-nose shots of your favorite canine. It’s not as flexible as a side-or bottom-mounted LCD, though, which let you swivel the screen to face forward for lining up self-portraits, and turn the fragile LCD screen in toward the camera body for protection when traveling.

The LCD can be set to one of five brightness levels, and there is a substantial difference from dimmest to brightest. On most days, we found the default setting to be just fine, even with the sun beaming brightly overhead.

Flash (8.00)

The pop-up flash gets a nice height extension, (nearly 3 inches above the center of the lens), making red-eye problems unlikely, and minimizing the chance that a shadow from the lengthy lens snout will appear in a picture. Nikon gives the flash range as 1 ft. 8 in. to 32 ft.(0.5 to 10m) at the widest lens setting and 5 ft. 8 in. to 8 ft. 2 in. (1.7 to 2.5m) at maximum telephoto, with auto ISO.

Even when shooting in auto mode, the camera can’t pop up the flash on its own when the lights are low – you have to hit the flash release button first. We prefer this system to letting the camera take control, with the possibility of flashing at inappropriate times or locations.

In addition to auto mode, the P100 supports auto with red-eye reduction – a pre-flash contracts subjects’ pupils to lower the chance of red-eye) and, if the camera still detects red-eye in the shot, the image is automatically digitally processed to remove it. Set the camera to fill flash and the flash fires no matter what the lighting condition. The slow sync options uses flash plus a slow shutter speed to capture a foreground subject (with the flash) and a darker background in the same shot. The rear-curtain sync option fires the flash just before the shutter closes, and is mostly useful to create a streaming light effect behind moving subjects, like a car with its rear lights on.

Flash exposure compensation is also supported, in a ±2 EV range, in 1/3 EV increments.

Lens (16.50)

The lens specs for the P100 are impressive, even if the lab-tested resolution performance has some flaws. The 26x zoom runs from the equivalent of 26mm to 678mm, offering extraordinary wide angle to extreme telephoto flexibility. It’s quite fast, too, with a maximum aperture of f/2.8 at the widest setting and f/5.0 at maximum zoom.

As usual, the lever-based zoom control offers less precision than turning a lens barrel, but the P100 is relatively smooth compared to most cameras with a similar control system.

The photos shown below, all taken from the same spot, demonstrate the camera’s zoom range.

There’s also a digital zoom capability up to 4x, in those cases where 26x isn’t long enough for you, though we routinely leave this disabled to avoid the image degradation it causes.

The distortion control feature attempts to digitally process your shot to correct for bowing or pincushioning caused by the lens.

Zoom Ratio Examples
4.6 mm	60.0 mm	120.0 mm

Battery (6.00)

Unlike most cameras, the P100’s EN-EL5 lithium ion battery is recharged inside the camera, by connecting the supplied charger to the proprietary USB port. The upside of this arrangement is that the battery can also be charged by connecting the camera to a powered USB computer port. The downside is that you can’t leave a spare battery charging while you’re shooting with the camera.

Nikon testing under CIPA standards (flash used for half the shots, but without changing the zoom length) sets the battery life at approximately 250 shots. That’s not a lot when you’re headed out for a full day’s shooting. And while a spare only runs a little more than $20 from Amazon, the lack of an external charger means one more chore you have to remember, or risk that awful powerless feeling when you press the ON/OFF button.

According to Nikon it takes about three and a half hours to recharge a fully depleted battery.

Memory (3.00)

The P100 accepts SD and SDHC memory cards, but not the latest high-capacity SDXC cards. The camera also has about 43MB of internal storage, not much in a multi-gigabyte world, but enough to store half a dozen full-res images in a pinch.

Jacks, Ports & Plugs (4.50)

The P100 steps up to high-def video recording, and offers the mini HDMI jack required to display the results (along with high-def stills) on an HDTV. The cable, as usual, is not included. You do get the data and standard-def video cables required to use the proprietary USB port, though we would have preferred an industry-standard connector.

And while it’s a small thing, a grateful nod goes to Nikon for using a port door that pivots out of the way and stays there till you move it back. No only is this more convenient than the too-common tabbed cover that springs back into place when you let go, it’s also less likely to break off after repeated use.