Zooming in on 'Cool'

A fun-to-use digital camera with good image quality and a focal length equivalent to 24mm to 1,000mm, the Nikon Coolpix P520 is a perfect travelling companion.

The mega-zoom camera is equipped with a 42x optical zoom Nikkor lens that allows you to capture close ups of birds and wild animals and because the lens has 24mm-equivalent focal length, the P520 is good for snapping beautiful landscape shots as well. The P520 features 18.1 a megapixel backside illumination CMOS sensor that receives light more efficiently for good low-light performance. The low-light CMOS also works well with the night landscape, combining shots into a single image to reduce noise.

P 520 comes with a 3.2-inch vari-angle TFT LCD monitor, which can be rotated to shoot from a wide variety of angles, including high and low, as well as for framing self-portraits.

It also comes with 0.2-inch electronic viewfinder with approximate 201K-dot equivalent LCD with the diopter adjustment function (-4 to +4 m-1). When you close the LCD monitor, you can use the electronic viewfinder to frame photos, which is very useful when shooting in bright sunlight.

P520 is also capable of shooting Full HD movies at 1920 × 1080 60i/50i resolution. It has a dedicated record button for video shooting and its lens-shift Vibration Reduction (VR) function also supports movie recording.

P520 has a built-in GPS function that allows you to record shooting location for still images and movies. When the photos are viewed with the ViewNX 2 program, a map showing shooting locations can be displayed in the computer monitor. The P520 also offers a log function that records movement over a specified interval as log data even when the camera is not in use or is turned off. This allows you to preserve a record of your movement on vacation, for example, for viewing on a map later.

Thanks to the GPS function, the P520 can also display the names of points of interest (POIs) on the screen. Nikon says the camera recognises about 1.86 million POIs and the POIs information on the camera is updated up to April 2002. During the test, the POIs mostly showed correct information.

The P520 is easy to use with several shooting modes accessible through the mode dial. The modes include full automatic, Programmed auto exposure (P), Aperture-priority (A), Shutter-priority (S), and manual.

You can also set your four own favourite shooting parameters and save them as a user setting.

I found that the full automatic exposure mode was good for capturing sharp and clean photos in most lighting conditions.

Interestingly, P520 also provides access to probably the three most used modes – Night Landscape, Landscape and Backlighting on the mode dial, making it very convenient to switch over to them.

There is also a choice of Scene Modes on the mode dial to access other scene modes, including Close Up, Dusk/Dawn, Night Portrait, Pet Portrait, and Sunset. If you are not sure which scene mode to use, you can also choose the Scene Auto Selector, which allows the camera to select the proper scene mode based on the current lighting conditions.

Some modes can be further customised. For example in the Night Landscape mode, you have choices of Hand-held or Tripod camera handling. If you choose the Hand-held option, the camera will take a few shots continuously and combine them into one clear photo, which is very handy for capturing lights at night.

And in the Pet Portrait mode, you can select whether to shoot a single shot or continuous shots.

Also accessible from the mode dial, is the Special Effects Mode with several choices of effects to use. Selective colour effect mode creates a black-and-white image in which only a specified colour remains.

Or you can create a silhouette photograph of a subject with a bright background. Another interesting special effect mode is Nostalgic sepia, which adds a sepia tone and reduces the contrast to simulate the qualities of an old photograph.

The test found that P520 captured very good image quality photos in most shooting environments when the light was properly metered or its focus was aimed at the right spot.

Its 4.3-180mm Nikkor lens, which is equivalent to 24-1000 mm in 35mm photography, has the aperture of 3 down to 5.9.

At the wide-angle 24mm focal length, the lens is bright enough to capture sharp, clean and colour saturated in most lighting conditions. I tested it on a cloudy day at the Rama IX Park, and the P520 still captured the bright green trees and the beautiful colours of the flowers.

But at the full telephoto focal length of 1,000mm, the aperture is only 5.9 so you will need a proper lighting to capture sharp photos. Anyway, during the test, I managed to easily capture beautiful shots of birds from far away.

The 42x could be your excellent electronic eye. During the test, I spotted some white objects on the ceiling of a park shelter. I couldn’t make out what they were just by looking but shooting them with zoom function of P520 revealed they were geckos eggs with three geckos protecting them. So, the 42x zoom was really fun to use. And its Active mode of Vibration Reduction function worked effectively during the 42x zoom.

The camera has good performance. P520 took about 2.3 seconds from starting to be ready for the first shot. Its shot-to-shot time was about 2.3 seconds and it could capture 7 frames per second at full resolution with its high-speed burst mode. Its battery lasted for more than 200 shots on a full charge.

Nikon Coolpix P520 has a suggested retail price of Bt16,950.

 

 

Key specs

_ Image Sensor: 1/2.3-inch CMOS sensor with 18.1 megapixel resolution

_ Lens: 42x optical Zoom, NIKKOR glass lens with f/3-5.9 aperture and 4.3-180mm focal length (angle of view equivalent to that of 24-1000 mm lens in 35mm format)

_ Autofocus (AF) Focus-area selection: Auto (9-area automatic selection), Centre (wide, normal, spot), Face priority, Manual with 99 focus areas, Subject tracking, Target Finding AF

_ Viewfinder: 0.2-inch electronic viewfinder with approx. 201K-dot equivalent LCD, with the diopter adjustment function (-4 to +4 m-1)

_ Monitor: 3.2-inch Vari-Angle TFT-LCD with 5-level brightness adjustment with 921,000 dots

_ Highest movie resolution: 1920x1080p / 30fps

_ ISO Sensitivity: ISO 80-3200

_ Exposure Metering: Matrix, Centre-weighted, Spot

_ Shutter Speed: 1/4000 - 8 s (when ISO sensitivity is fixed at 80 or 100 in P,S, A or M mode)

_ Storage Media: SD memory card, SDHC memory card, SDXC memory card

_ Battery: 1,100 mAh Li-ion battery

_ Dimension: 125.2 mm x 84.1 mm x 101.6 mm (W x H x D)

_ Weight: 550g