It’s been raining new cameras this month, 8 new Coolpix from Nikon and just 3 from Canon. 16 Coolpix this year, as Thom Hogan points out - http://bythom.com/ . We all know Nikon has long lagged behind Canon in digicam land, but does Nikon really think just making more cameras than Canon will close the gap?
Most of them come in flashy colours, have features only Paris Hilton addicts would want and sport a new 16 megapixel sensor. Why is Nikon focusing on airheads with its digicams, when it makes such great DSLRs? And why is Nikon following Sony and Fuji in the silly megapixel race?
Canon makes some decent digicams – viz the two I’ve reviewed recently, the SX230 HS and the IXUS 300/SD4000. Then there’s the S95 and the G12, and now the new a super-slim super-zoom IXUS 1100/ Elph 510HS which wraps a 12x zoom lens into a very neat package. Canon isn’t known for holding back on megapixels, but it has come back to 10 or 12 from 15mp a couple of years ago. The results shows this to be a wise move.
Canon dominates the top of this market, while Nikon seems happy to follow Sony in stacking its digicams with mega features that have little to do with photography. Yes, there are couple of exceptions but they’re pretty half-hearted. The P6000 was one of Nikon’s first attempts at making a serious digicam, but its mixed-bag image quality and performance disappointed most reviewers. The P7000 followed about 12 months ago and aped the Canon G12 in form and features.
It was another dud. Ken Rockwell, known for calling a spade a bloody shovel, called the P7000 'retarded'. ‘Nikon went out of its way to offer too many ways to do too many things, he wrote. ‘Nikon tried to put too many features in this camera, but never bothered to spend the time and effort required to put all these features into this camera in a way that we could find, use and understand them. There are too many different ways to do to many different things, nothing is organized from a user's point of view, so nothing is easy or clear. Ooops! Worse, the buggy firmware means some things, like the rear control dial or flash control options, don't even work as planned, further adding to the frustration. http://www.kenrockwell.com/nikon/coolpix/p7000.htm
Nikon hurried a firmware update to fix a few things, among them painfully slow menus, but that wasn’t enough to rescue the expensive camera from oblivion. DP Review politely suggested the Canon s95 or G12 or the Panny LX5 were better options. http://www.dpreview.com/reviews/q42010highendcompactgroup/page18.asp
Now Nikon has released the P7100. It might’ve fixed most of the things that were wrong with the P7000, but the world has moved on since then. As Thom Hogan puts it: ‘The P7100 has an extra control and a tiltable screen, so it must obviously be a new model. … With product cycles so short, some things don't get done that the company might have wanted to do. So they push them back to the next iteration of the product. The P7100 is claimed to write faster when shooting raw files, focus more reliably, and respond faster in the menus. Obviously, someone worked on the P7000 firmware in the last year.’
Meanwhile, Canon is probably readying the launch of its updated S95/G12 line, well before Christmas I suspect, and Nikon will be caught with its pants down once more.
Nikon’s other attempt at a decent digicam is the p300, with serious attributes like a fast lens, metal body, manual controls and >$300 price tag, so it looks set to go up against the S95 and LX5 until you see that Nikon didn’t worry about upgrading the tiny sensor or offering RAW. The reviews were decent enough but almost always there was an ‘if only Nikon had …’
Thom says: 'So we now have two "professional" (P) series Coolpix models that look compelling on paper, but neither of which totally delivers the goods. I can't really recommend the P300 over a Canon S95 or Panasonic LX-5 as a pocket camera.’ In other words: must try harder, Nikon. Canon must be laughing fit to kill.
Nikon has done a better job in the travel zoom category, it seems, since the newish S9100 came equal first in DP Review's recently released mega test.
They said handling was fine and performance was snappy, and image quality very good except in poor light. The S9100 has an impressive 25-450mm (35mm equivalent) zoom range in a pretty compact body, along with a supersharp 920K screen. http://www.dpreview.com/reviews/q311travelzoomgrouptest/page17.asp
What the S9100 doesn't have is any kind of manual controls, which confirms that Nikon isn't serious about making pocket cameras for serious photographers. The equal first place-getter Canon SX230 HS has full manual controls - see my review a couple of posts below. So in my book, Canon wins this contest as well.
Come on, Nikon - will you get serious please?
KIM
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