Introduction
This is some words and images on the subject of the Nikon Coolpix 2500 digital camera. I had been tempted to buy such a camera for a few years, but couldn’t find one which had good enough quality images for a price I considered reasonable.
When I found the camera on special offer (GBP 150, when it’s 250 everywhere else in the UK) I decided it was time to take the plunge. So far, I’ve been very pleased.
Description
The Coolpix 2500 has a very long list of features which I am not going to copy and paste here. I’m sure you can find all the tech specs yourself. The features which looked good to me were:
- USB mass storage support. I use Linux and there doesn’t appear to be full-on support for the 2500 (through the gphoto2 library) yet, so with mass storage available, at least I’ll be able to do basic stuff like copy pictures to my hard drive and delete them from the camera.
I should mention that I am definitely not a professional photographer and don’t intend to become one. The 2500 isn’t aimed at professionals, or even at wannabes. Its physical characteristics are similar to that of a cheap 35mm film camera and it doesn’t even have a viewfinder, never mind one which gives you the view through the lens itself. There’s probably a technical term for that, but I don’t have a clue what it is.
If you’re still reading, hopefully by now you’ll realise this isn’t a technical review by a pro or enthusiast, just a general impression from a complete amateur who bought his camera to have fun with.
First impressions
The box the camera comes in is packed with several bits of dead tree information and a proper manual. The inclusion of a quick start guide was welcome, as it gave me something to read while the battery charged.
The rest of the stuff in the box comprises an USB cable, a little block which is the battery charger, a strap and a stupidly low capacity (8MB) compact flash (CF) card.
I attached the strap to the camera and took it off again. That’s probably the only use it’ll ever get. If I’m expecting to be in a state where I need to tie the camera to my body, I’m not going to take the camera, because I’ll probably break it.
Speaking of breaking, it might be a little more difficult to break this camera than the other ones I’ve seen. The only part which looks like it would be vulnerable while in transport (read: pocket of trousers) is the LCD screen. The lens and flash are protected by the camera body when they swivel back into it.
The battery took 1h10m to charge, a great deal less than the 2h mentioned in one of the manual things I read. About 50 shots later, half with flash, the battery died and is now charging again. I hope it’ll settle down and start giving longer life. A spare battery is about 30 quid.
I’m not really sure if I like the idea of yet another proprietary LiIon battery. 2xAA would have been better, I think, if only so that I could just increase my supply of (NiMH) AAs and carry a pocketful if I was worried about running short.
The camera isn’t particularly small, but it’s shaped nicely. It’s going to be slightly bulky in the pocket of my trousers, but it doesn’t have anything major sticking out, so I’m not expecting to catch it on anything (and perhaps dropping it because of that.)
First use
Twisting the lens around to the position you want is a little fiddly at first, probably because I’ve been trying to avoid touching the lens. I’m sure I’ll get used to that over time.
The three position slider on top of the camera is brilliant. I like proper hardware controls where possible (on-screen menus annoy me) and this thing is just perfect for moving between the three modes, known technically as: 1. View/delete pictures. 2. Take pictures. 3. Off.
Why is that slider so brilliant? Well, with one hand, I can twist the lens around to the right position for taking a pic, switch the camera on, and get my finger over the trigger, ready to raise the camera and shoot as soon as it’s booted. I like to take pictures which aren’t posed, so being able to get the camera ready to take a shot as soon as I get it pointed in the right direction is great.
I took about 50 pics, to get a feel for it. This was great fun, especially every time I remembered that it would normally cost a stupid amount of money for each of these pics with a film camera, and that I would be able to stick them on my computer and look at them properly in only a few minutes.
Here’s one of the first pics I took:
Ok, taking a picture into the sun seemed like a bit of a silly idea, but with the LCD viewfinder, I could see that it had worked, though I wasn’t sure how it would look at ‘proper’ size. I was very pleased when I got home and saw how it came out. Is it normal to be able to take a picture right into the sun like that? I don’t know, but I don’t think I would have risked it with a film camera.
One great thing about this pic was that I was able to take it with the camera held at waist height and the lens twisted upwards. This could be very handy for making it look like I’m not actually taking photos (unposed pictures - great!) and it also meant that I didn’t have trouble with the sun getting into my eyes (around the edge of the camera or in the viewfinder) while I took it.
One of my housemates. I obscured her identity, obviously. That means I also lowered the quality by adding another jpeg compression, but it’s not too bad I think.
Well, yes, it looks like any old pic taken with a cheap 35mm camera. That’s just fine for me.
One thing I noticed while taking this first load of pics was that even though I had the camera set to ‘automatic’ mode, it seemed not to notice that it needed the flash sometimes. For example, I took three pics of the above housemate. The first one was a little unflattering as she was chewing, so I tried again and didn’t get any flash. The third time (seen above) it worked fine. Perhaps I missed some important detail in the manual which I haven’t read yet.