Nikon Coolpix P300

Zitat: Pro: + Ultra-Bright F/1.8 lens + lowers required ISO Contra: - Visible noise at all ISO sensitivities Suitability - What is it good for? The Nikon P300 is defined by a combination of size and features. This is an advanced camera, yet it is much smaller than most cameras with manual controls. The P300 is therefore more likely to be taken places where the weight and visibility of a larger camera is problem. The P300 is so small that it barely exceeds the thickness of an ultra-compact and should easily fit in most jacket pockets. The 4.2X optical zoom lens has a range from 24mm to 100mm in 35mm-equivalent terms. The ultra-wide-end is suitable for landscape, interiors and architecture. The telephoto-end is somewhat short but perfectly usable for portraits. Anything which requires more distance such as typical street photography is going to be severely limited. The extremely bright F/1.8 aperture lets the P300 shoot with less light, at lower ISO and with less motion blur than most of its peers, something which is very useful for indoor and social photography. Do note that the maximum aperture closes down to F/4.9 at the long end. The 12 megapixels sensor permits sharp prints up to 15x20", at least at ISO sensitivities where noise is low. This Coolpix is reasonably suited for creative photography. Manual controls provide complete control over exposure within the limits of the camera. Specifically, the top 1/2000s shutter-speed is fast enough to freeze most action while the slowest one of 8s works for typical night photography. It is important to know that 8s is only possible at ISO 160 and by ISO 200 the slowest speed drops to 4s, It then drops to 2s at ISO 800 and by one more stop for each additional ISO stop. Despite having continuous modes running from 8 FPS to 120 FPS, this digital camera is unsuitable for action photography since the LCD remains blank or severely lags action in continuous drive mode. This makes it impossible to keep up with action. With an ISO range reaching 3200, low-light handheld shooting is possible.

Zitat: The CoolPix P300 is a great camera for sports and low-light photography that will help beginners progress, it’s just lacking in a few key features that would perfect it

Zitat: Pro: + l´optique + les modes adaptés à tous les usages + finition + robustesse + simplicité et facilité d´usage. Contra: - image sur-traitées - lègèrement lent.

Zitat: On paper the Nikon Coolpix P300 beats its main rivals in most key areas - more megapixels, bigger LCD screen, faster continuous shooting, higher quality video - but the lack of RAW mode, physically smaller sensor and some questionable design decisions ultimately make it slightly less appealing than the competition. Just like its big brother, the P7000, the new Nikon Coolpix P300 is something of a flawed gem. While we love the extensive feature list, high-res LCD screen, and the ability to shoot full HD video with stereo sound, use of the optical zoom and creative filter effects, we can´t help but be disappointed by the inexplicable inability to shoot in RAW format, one of the must-have features for this class of camera and something that all of the P300´s rivals offer. More serious is the physically smaller sensor, which produces noise-free images at ISO 160-200 but starts to fall apart at ISO 400, getting progressively worse as you go up the range. The fast F/1.8 lens will partly make up for this, allowing you to use a lower ISO speed, but only at the wide-angle focal lengths, with the maximum aperture quickly becoming slower until you hit a disappointing F/4.9 at 100mm telephoto. The P300´s overall image quality is pleasing, but simply not as good as its rivals. Despite offering a well-thought-out control system for operating the creative shooting modes, the lack of quick and easy access to many of the camera´s most frequently used features, such as ISO speed and white balance, slows down its operation, with at least 4 button presses required just to change the ISO. On a camera predominantly aimed at prosumers, these kind of oversights limit its appeal, and although the Scene Auto Selector, Backlighting and Easy Panorama modes will help the P300 appeal to a less experienced audience, we can´t help but feel that Nikon have missed the main target because of a few bad design decisions. The Nikon Coolpix P300 certainly isn´t a bad camera, particularly if you value full HD movies above RAW support, higher-resolution images over out-and-out quality, and you trust the camera to make the right settings for you. We can´t think of too many photographers who subscribe to that viewpoint, though, making the P300 better suited to life as an affordable semi-advanced compact, rather than a serious snapper´s pocketable DSLR backup.