Nikon COOLPIX 4300 Digital Camera [4MP 3xOptical]

Product Information

As the screen size of the COOLPIX lens is small and many shots are taken with the maximum aperture, the high optical performance is needed. Not to mention designing, the high product quality at production deserves the Nikkor. The extreme tonal range of this image makes it a tough shot for many digicams, which is precisely why I set it up this way, and why I shoot it with no fill flash or reflector to open the shadows. The object is to hold both highlight and shadow detail without producing a "flat" picture with muddy colors, and the Coolpix 4300 did a good job. and expert alike to enjoy digital pictures and picture-taking. Nikon Coolpix 4300 Feature Highlights Slightly low flash power, with a range closer to 8 feet in our tests than the 12 feet of Nikon's specs. There are several sizes of CCD available used in the COOLPIX, and even the largest screen sized CCD for use in the COOLPIX 5000 and 5700 is just approx.

Digital Cameras - Nikon Coolpix 4300 Digital Camera Review

The Coolpix 4300 performed well on our "laboratory" resolution test chart. It started showing artifacts in the test patterns at resolutions as low as 800 lines per picture height in both vertical and horizontal directions. I found "strong detail" out to about 1,050 lines per picture height in the vertical direction, and about 1,100 lines horizontally. "Extinction" of the target patterns occurred about 1,300 lines. The macro photography of 4cm in front of the lens on the wide-angle side (magnification 0.74x converted in 135-type film camera) and 30cm in front of the lens on the telephoto side (magnification 0.33x converted in 135-type film camera) like a micro lens *2 can be enjoyed by the lens of the COOLPIX 4300. I routinely shoot this series of images to show the field of view for each camera, with the lens at full wide angle, at maximum telephoto ( 3x, in this case), and at full telephoto with the digital zoom enabled. The Coolpix 3500's lens is equivalent to a 38-114mm zoom on a 35mm camera. That corresponds to a moderate wide angle to a moderate telephoto. Following are the results at each zoom setting. inch in a diagonal length and the CCD size of the compact COOLPIX 3100, SQ and 3700 is just only approx. 1/6.5 inch in comparison with the 135-type film. Thus, this small sized CCD enables to make the lens compact and produce new features that are not found in the film camera. When a small subject is taken with a close-up shot, the lens needs to be considerably stopped down for focusing on the overall subject in the film camera. But, the subject can be shot in a bright condition since even the maximum aperture lens of the COOLPIX produces the same depth of field as with the stopped-down apertures f/13 ~ f/24. Furthermore, there is no need for hassle and annoying operations for computing an aperture value suitable for focus on the whole subject.One of the features is that the depth of filed is deep. To put it plainly, the depth of field is the range where the camera is focused as sharply as possible on the subject part. When the sharp focus range is narrow, it is termed shallow and it is termed deep when the range is broad as your photo enthusiasts well know. It can be said that the shorter the focal length and the larger the f-number (stop down), the greater the depth of field. When shooting by a telephoto lens with full aperture, the depth of field becomes shallow thereby the subject can stand out against nice soft out-of-focus (so-called "bokeh") areas. On the other hand, if the wide-angle lens (the shorter focal length) is stopped down for shot, the depth of field is so deep that an area from the close to far distances is in acceptably sharp focus. You can power the camera with either the included rechargeable lithium-ion battery or a disposable lithium 2CR5 cell. The 4300 has a feature that I've seen on a few other digicams, but would like to see on all of them: A "tweak" adjustment that lets you bias the camera's default white balance settings towards yellow or blue. This is great because I rarely find a camera's white balance that does exactly what I want it to. The example below shows the effect of the white balance tweak adjustments applied to the incandescent setting on this subject. The Coolpix 4300's Manual white balance setting produced the best results here, with the most accurate overall color. Though slightly warm, I preferred the warmer cast to the Daylight setting's cool tone. The Auto setting was just a little too warm here. All white balance settings were close enough to neutral to be considered usable though. Resolution is very high, as the tree limbs and shrubbery show great detail. Details are also sharp throughout the frame, though the corners betray a hint of softness.

Nikon COOLPIX 4300, COOLPIX 4500 EN-EL1 USB Charger for Nikon COOLPIX 4300, COOLPIX 4500

Optical distortion on the Coolpix 4300 is about average (which is nonetheless too high in my opinion) at the wide-angle end, where I measured approximately 0.8 percent barrel distortion. The telephoto end fared a little better, where I measured a 0.2 percent pincushion distortion. Chromatic aberration is moderate, showing only about three pixels of coloration on either side of the target lines in the corners of the image. (This distortion is visible as a very slight colored fringe around the objects at the edges of the field of view on the resolution target.) The COOLPIX 4300 has only two aperture stops, the maximum and minimum. A part of the reason why there are only two aperture stops is that the sufficient depth of field can be obtained even with the maximum aperture as described before. Another reason is an effect of light diffraction. As another example, Fig.2 shows a lens of the COOLPIX SQ. In a spiral type lens like the SQ, the focusing group as the group 1 is moved by the electric cum and the macro photography is realized by using the surplus lens movement amount of the group 1 available in-between the wide angle and the telephoto. Overall results are similar to the wider shot above, and the Coolpix 4300's 3x zoom lens helps prevent distortion of Marti's features. Detail is outstanding, with very sharp details in Marti's face and hair. (Probably more detail here than Marti would care to see, which is why I don't show it to her 1:1 on screen;-) The shot at right was taken at the default exposure setting, which is just a little bright, but loses only the brightest highlights. Detail is strong in the shadow areas, with moderately low noise. An excellent job. The Coolpix 4300 offers an interesting Image Adjustment menu, with a wide variety of options, letting you adjust contrast, lightness, and color.

Heritage

Image viewing is done on its 1.5 inch TFT LCD screen, and Type 1 CompactFlash (CF) cards are its storage medium. It was designed to be powered by a rechargeable EN-EL1 lithium ion battery, but it also accepts the non-rechargeable 6V 2CR5/DL245 lithium battery. It weighs about 7.9 ounces without the battery or CF card, and its components are housed inside a body sized at 3.7 × 2.7 × 2.0 inches. Fig.1 is a lens structure view of the COOLPIX 4300. The lens is consisted of three groups including the first group of a negative lens as a whole, the second group of a positive lens as a whole and the third group of a single positive lens element. Wherein the lens is zoomed by moving the group 1 and 2 and is focused by moving the group 3 as indicated in the figure. Save some room in your budget for a reasonably large CompactFlash Type I card to replace the 16MB "starter" card that Nikon includes. This shot is always a very tough test of a camera's white balance capability, given the strong, yellowish color cast of the household incandescent bulbs used for the lighting. The Coolpix 4300's Manual white balance clearly produced the best color, but its Auto option did much better than average. ( Incandescent really had trouble though.) Marti's skin tone is pretty good here, and even the always-difficult blue flowers turned out pretty well. Here again, quite a bit of exposure compensation was needed, as the camera's default exposure produced very dark images. (All the shots at right were snapped with an exposure boost of +1.3 EV.)

Nikon Coolpix 4500 Review - Digital Photography Review Nikon Coolpix 4500 Review - Digital Photography Review

Moreover, this macro photography brings about an advantage that the close-up photography is taken readily with the deep depth of filed as described in the foregoing. All in all though, a very capable camera for low light shooting. The table below shows the best exposure we were able to obtain for each of a range of illumination levels. Images in this table (like all of our sample photos) are untouched, exactly as they came from the camera. important differences which are detailed below. Coolpix 5700 compared to Coolpix 5000 (differences only)

Seeking a tough and waterproof compact digital camera for holidays or the great outdoors? The Nikon W300 might just prove its mettle in the wet and the dry

The shot at right was taken with a +0.3 EV exposure compensation adjustment, which brightened the midtones while losing only the brightest highlight detail. I chose the Daylight white balance as the most accurate, as the Auto and Manual white balances both resulted in warm images. (The Manual setting produced the warmest of the two, with a strong yellow cast.) Advantages are a well above-average image quality regarding sharpness. Color rendition is accurate, especially regarding the critical leaf-green shades. It is, however, under-saturated, and often needs to be improved by subsequent processing. The camera has many setting options, but unfortunately, saturation is not one of them. It also has a zoom-linked optical viewfinder. The Nikon Coolpix 4300 is a digital camera that was made by Nikon. It was first released on October 1, 2002, and is no longer in production. At 4.0 effective megapixels, it is capable of delivering 2,272 × 1,704 pixel images. An included lens cap protects its Nikkor 3× optical Zoom lens, with a focal length of 8 to 24mm (equivalent of a field of view in 38 to 114mm lens), as well as an aperture of f/2.8–4.9 and shutter speed of 8–1/1,000 sec. It is capable of ISO equivalents of 100, 200, and 400. Gavin has over 30 year experience of writing about photography and television. He is currently the editor of British Photographic Industry News, and previously served as editor of Which Digital Camera and deputy editor of Total Digital Photography.