It's no surprise that a camera offering such a long zoom offers four anti-blur systems. These comprise of a CCD-shift system Nikons calls Vibration Reduction; a High ISO mode, Motion Detection and Best Shot Selector, which takes up to ten frames, and then selects and saves the sharpest one. Nikon’s D-Lighting technology is also included, which can be used to tweak brightness and contrast in both shooting and playback modes.
Easy access to basic functions but shooting modes are buried in menu pages
You also get the usual face-, smile- and blink-detection systems, and there’s a good selection of continuous shooting modes including, one that shoots at 1.4fps at maximum resolution. But the P90 can do much better than this if you’re content to shoot at a lower resolution.
Multi-shot 16 fires off 16 shots at 7.5fps - with a maximum resolution of 2592 x 1944 - and displays them as a single picture, while Sport Continuous mode offers a top speed of 15fps for up to 45 frames at up to 2048 x 1536. Finally, there’s a movie mode offering VGA-resolution at 30fps and 15fps, QVGA-resolution at 15fps, and time lapse recording with an interval time range from 30 seconds to 60 minutes. Oh, and you even get 47MB of internal memory.
In general, the P90’s handling was somewhat disappointing. It’s comfortable to hold with a nice rubberized grip and a thumb rest but, oh dear, Nikon definitely needs to work on the rest of the user interface.
Although the EVF has the same number of pixels as the LCD screen, the image looked coarser. Contrast was poor and colour reproduction was, frankly, diabolical. Colours were over-saturated and when we took a shot of a green door, it looked dark blue in the EVF – Nikon really should have given the P90 an optical viewfinder. The articulating LCD screen is useful for shooting at various angles, but the screen is one of the worst for viewing in bright sunlight.
The versatile LCD panel is handy but fails to shine in bright conditions
There’s a good sprinkling of camera modes: auto, program AE, aperture priority, shutter priority and manual. You can also save a couple of settings in PASM modes for fast access on the mode dial, and there are also fifteen scene modes including landscape, food and panorama. There’s even a dedicated setting on the mode dial for sport continuous mode.
Next page: Sample Shots
COMMENTS
very beautiful
this camera looks very beautiful , I l ike it !
here I have a good place that is Tradestead there are many kinds of beautiful and powerful consumer electronics with very cheap price that I like it very much!
Image stabilisation FTW
Alex said "I have a 300mm (450mm equivalent) zoom on my APS-C SLR camera and have a job getting steady shots with that. You have to have a tripod."
Thankfully, Nikon are now quite good at vibration-reduction - it's the really big advance in lens technology in the last decade, you no longer need to hold the camera still. One of the pictures in the article is taken hand-held at 624mm equivalent and looks pretty sharp; even the pocket Canon camera I have can take sharp macro shots of coins in poorly-lit museums with a quarter-second exposure.
65%, what does it actually mean?
Do things ever get <50% these days? If not, we must assume 50% as the new zero, meaning this camera comes in at what, 30%? Sounds round about right from the pictures.
P90
Does it strip down into 3 parts for easy cleaning? where's the 50 rounds of 5.7mm kept? a P90 remodelled for the toruist/terrorist market? i'll take 2
Pointless waste of money.
Nobody with any experience of taking good quality photos would ever specify a camera like this. It is riddled with compromises - the sensor is too small and the zoom range is too big.
I have a 300mm (450mm equivalent) zoom on my APS-C SLR camera and have a job getting steady shots with that. You have to have a tripod. At 624mm you would need to cement it into the foundations to get a steady shot.
With this camera you end up paying twice for each "feature". You pay extra to have a 12MP sensor but it's so small you have to pay extra for the all the noise reduction tech that blurs out much of the detail that is "captured" by the high resolution sensor.
I defy anyone to get a decent shot at the maximum zoom without spending more on the tripod than the camera itself cost.
This is a camera designed by a marketing department not a photographer.
I pity anyone who wastes their money on this device.
