My birthday came around quick, or so it seems anyway. I have had a busy year with my photography so time has appeared to have flown by. Last year my youngest son bought me a Fuji Instax camera that I have enjoyed using through the year. This year he surprised me with a Nikon Coolpix L810 Compact Bridge Camera.
I thanked him for his thoughtful gift and admitted that bridge cameras have never really caught my eye until now. To be honest I wasn't expecting it and it really cheered me up. Having never used one, nor even seen one up close, I headed to the Nikon website for the manual and to see if it needed any firmware updates.
The Nikon L810 was unleashed upon the photography community in 2012 and positioned as a happy medium between a well featured compact and a basic DSLR. It boasts a 16 megapixel CCD sensor, lens shift vibration reduction, a 3 inch led screen and motion detection.
The built in lens is a super zoom that ranges from 4mm to 104mm which is equivalent to 23mm to 585mm in focal length on a full frame sensor, which is no mean feat in such a tiny package. It also has a built in flash and 720p HD video too. The hand grip is a "cunningly disguised" battery compartment that takes four AA batteries and it is also where I found the SD memory card slot.
I installed four Duracell AA batteries, a 16GB SDHC card and closed the compartment. I switched it on and it came to life straight away. It was on it's default settings so I spent a little time exploring the simple menu. On paper it looks like a point and shoot camera, so how about we go for a wander and see how it performs in the wild.
I took a wander along the farm road and captured various photos, some familiar and others I spotted along the way. Peak autumn has well and truly left us here in Wigan and what is remaining of the colour hasn't got long left. I was hoping the CCD sensor in my Nikon Coolpix L810 would bring out that colour to share it's last hurrah with us.
As it often happens at this time of year, the heavens opened and it started to rain about halfway through my walk. With the camera not being weather sealed, I put it back in my bag and headed home to dry off and have a brew.
A couple of days later the sun decided to shine brightly and I headed off to the farm again to give my Nikon Coolpix L810 another outing. The sun may have been shining brightly with hardly a cloud in the sky, but the cold wind from the north had the temperature hovering around freezing point.
It was a great test of the camera and it performed admirably. I could probably use it at lower temperatures, but zero celcius is about as cold as my aching bones can handle these days. I soon got the photos I wanted and headed home again for another well earned cup of tea.
When sorting through the jpegs from my new camera, I was pleased to see that Nikon had fitted a decent lens to the Coolpix L810. I was also pleased to not have to do too much to them in Affinity Studio. A few tweaks here and there was enough to get them looking presentable. The lack of RAW files didn't worry me, nor did the auto focus hunting as it tried to zero in on my chosen composition. I did miss having a viewfinder, but we can't have all of the cake and eat it.
Is it the best camera? Nope, but it's not supposed to be. It's a point and shoot with a few things I have in my DSLR. The scene modes helped me get my photos with their automatic shutter speed and apertures and are easily selected via the handy button on the back of the camera. The 26x zoom is quick and I soon got used to framing up my compositions with it. The macro setting sometimes fought against the zoom and autofocus, but I figured it out.
Overall, I enjoyed using my Nikon Coolpix L810 for the first time. It was a nice surprise gift and to be fair will probably be with me when I go out in future. Here's a few photos from my Nikon Coolpix L810 taken on a dark, wet, cold, dull and gloomy day in Wigan. I have placed them and more in an album on Flickr you can visit using the link below. I hope you enjoy them.
Nikon Coolpix L810 - Part 1
Nikon Coolpix L810 - Part 2
.jpg)
No comments:
Post a Comment