Nikon Coolpix P100

A year has passed since Nikon launched its P90, which was the manufacturer's first bridge camera after a long time away from this part of the market.

Testing it left us wanting more, so we're glad to report that the P100 has a more exciting spec, including a 26x zoom, 1080p Full HD video, a HDR scene mode and a burst mode at 10 fps, as well as some innovations including a new back-illuminated sensor.  But will this new technology be enough to make the difference?

Handling

Although the body of the camera itself is relatively slim, the P100 stands out thanks to a large lens, and there's no denying that there's a lot of room for manoeuvre with focal lengths ranging from 26 to 676 mm.  Given how far it can zoom, a range of apertures from f/2.8 to f/5 is also pretty decent.  The P100 might go unnoticed in wide-angle mode but when you're zoomed right in it's a lot more visible.  We imagine you'll want to remember to bring the zoom back down when you're done as the barrel sticks out so far that it will be easy to knock it against something.
 

The layout of the controls for photo mode has hardly changed, and you'll still find the useful selection wheel for the different priority modes and the four-way directional control.  It's a tried and tested approach that's simple and effective.  We would nevertheless have liked to have seen direct control over ISO sensitivity.  For video, the P100 has a switch and a button to choose the recording mode (HD or high speed) and start filming respectively.

The viewfinder is still not up to much: it's pretty useless and uncomfortable, whether you're wearing glasses or not.  Fortunately, the LCD screen is on a horizontal hinge and has good viewing angles, so you can use that instead.  It's very fluid and has 460 000 pixels.  The only shame is that Nikon didn't think to allow it to fold out in the other direction too.

The battery in the P100 is very small, and although Nikon claims it can manage 230 photos, we hardly reached 200 during our tests, which isn't really enough for a whole weekend.  You recharge the battery without taking it out of the camera, which means you can't keep a replacement on standby, but handily, you can either plug it into a regular socket or a USB port on a computer.
 

Responsiveness

There's no hanging about for the P100, which powers up in 1.3 seconds and has an autofocus that's easily under a second most of the time.  It has no problems with saving your photos either, while the fast CMOS sensor gives it a burst mode of 10 fps (for a second at a time) which really helps analyse a fast movement.

Picture quality

With the new back-illuminated CMOS sensor and a lower resolution, we were expecting better performance from the P100 at higher sensitivities, but the way it processes images is far from convincing.  Even at the lowest sensitivity, 160 ISO, you can see grain in blocks of colour when viewing photos at 100% on a screen; blurriness is also a problem at this level.  Overall, the photos we took lacked detail, and the sharpness, which was very visible, didn't really help matters much.  Still, blurry grain isn't too much of problem up to 800 ISO, and remains monochromatic.  We would avoid 1600 ISO and higher sensitivities in all but the most extreme cases, because the results are very blurry indeed.



As is often the case, the lens on the P100 struggles a little around the edges of the frame in wide-angle mode, but becomes more even, but less sharp, as you zoom in.  Chromatic aberration is sometimes visible on A4 prints.

The P100's automatic modes do a relatively good job and the exposure is usually about right.  A key element on bridge cameras with long zooms, the stabilisation, works well and relies on a combination of mechanical sensor movement and digital processing.  In our tests, our portrait short of Barbie was sharp at 1/2 s, which is very good.  But then again, the very digital-looking results might not please everybody.


Video

Nikon had a lot of catching up to do in video mode and the P100 has definitely come a long way.  As well as what is now becoming a traditional 1280 x 720 pixel video mode, this bridge also offers 1080p HD video at 30 fps, with stereo sound and fully functional zoom.  There are also faster modes at lower resolutions, including 320 x 240 pixels at 240 fps, or a more workable 640 x 480 pixel (VGA) mode at 120 fps.  When light levels drop, video begins to flicker and the effects are very visible if you watch your clips on a large TV.  That's the case for just about every camera that can film, though.