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Photo : Nikon Coolpix L6 6MP Digital Camera with 3x Optical Zoom |
- Great cameraThis is actually our second time buying this camera. My 15 year old bought this camera once with her own money and loved it, so we were very sad when it met an untimely end after falling out of her sweatshirt pocket, over a balcony, down 3 stories into a parking lot of a hotel we were at on vacation. Miraculously, the memory card was spared and she was able to pull all her pics from there. When it came time for her to get a new camera she and I both spent alot of time searching different cameras but she ultimately bought this one again. It does everything she needs and she uses pretty much all the features on it. It's very easy to understand all the features and access them. Its a great camera, takes good pics, has decent video for what she needs with her friends and aside from the crash landing we've had no problems with either one.
Rating:
- Bad camera for activity - Great customer serviceCamera gets 3 stars, but Nikon customer service gets 5.
Camera has a tendency to turn itself on when in the case. The lens kept trying to open against resistance and eventually failed. I think it was because holding down the Play button, which is prominent on the back side, turns the camera on and needlessly opens the lens. So forget about slipping it into a pocket or backpack or anything else you'd like to be able to do with a compact.
However, even though I didn't have the receipt, Nikon repaired it quickly and free of charge. I mailed it to them on a Friday, and had it back 10 days later, 4 of which were weekends, and 4 of which were in transit. I was pleased.
EDIT: I'm an idiot and left my Nikon on the roof of my car. After reading reviews and trying numerous cameras in the $100-200 range, I settled on the L12 as a replacement.
I had two major problems with the L6: it's tendency to turn on in the case, and the very slow acquisition speed (the time I had to hold down the button before the picture was actually captured). Both are greatly improved in the L12. The play button is recessed, and even when it is held down the camera turns on in preview mode but without opening the lens. The acquisition time is also better, but I can't quantify it exactly yet. Maybe half.
Rating:
- Does not live up to Nikon qualityI bought this camera on clearance at a local Target for $100 and even at that price think I paid too much for it. Outdoor shots with plenty of light are great, however anything indoors where the flash needs to be used are not. The flash takes an incredibly long time to recharge, and gives an unnatural illumination - deer in the head lights look. If you turn the flash off, there is no no image steady option besides bss (shoots multiple shots and picks the sharpest one). Also low light images have a tremendous amount of noise. The video recorder feature is great as long as you don't want sound. You hear the noise of the focusing motor over anyone talking, which is annoying and makes any audio unusable. The only plus to this camera is it's size, but even that can't compensate for it's quality issues. I would not buy this camera again.
Rating:
- Good product for the priceJust a few notes from using this camera after having owned an HP, Olympus, and Sony digital camera.
1. The Nikon has no manual focus mode but the autofocus is not bad. If you do a lot of low light work, a camera with an infrared focus beam like the Sony is better. With the the infrared beam, the camera can focus in total darkness.
2. The manual only mentions SD memory cards to 1 GB but a store let me try a 2 GB, X60 card and it worked almost doubling the number of photos and increasing the movie record time to about 30 minutes in the highest quality, 640x480 resolution, 30 frames/sec mode. My camera has firmware version 1.0 so it is likely all L6's can use a larger memory. One person has reported it will take a 4 GB memory ( not the SDHC type but plain SD ). I cannot verify that however.
3. Some reviewers here have noted slow writing times to memory but remember that speed depends not only on the camera but the speed of the memory. Most SD cards with no speed indicator write at about 1.5 MB/sec. The high speed cards mentioned in the manual are X66 ( means 66 times 150KB/sec ) which achieve write speeds of 10 MB/sec.
4. The L6 can zoom during movie mode but the zoom is digital not optical. Also, you can hear the focusing mechanism noise on the soundtrack in movie mode.
5. Having had batteries go dead at the most inopportune times, a camera that uses common AA's is a plus.
6. The L6 only has one metering mode unlike some cameras that can switch between spot and center weighted average. The many scene modes make up for this but one caveat. The blur warning available in non-scene mode does not work in scene mode.
7. Macro Mode was a pleasant surprise. Both my Sony and the Nikon focus to about the same distance in macro mode but there is a big difference in the results. The Sony achieves the close distance in wide angle mode. At maximum zoom, the Sony requires moving the camera back from the object. The Nikon is the opposite. It requires moving back ( not as much as the Sony ) at wide angle and it meets its close focusing distance specification at maximum optical zoom.
8. The battery compartment. The L6 has a locking latch on the battery compartment door and the door opens by being pulled out towards the front of the camera. It may not seem like much unless you have owned an Olympus which had a battery compartment door on the bottom with no latch and that opened by sliding along the long dimension of the camera. Many times I would reach in my pocket to find the door open and the batteries having fallen out of the camera.
9. A 25 minute video took about 25 minutes to transfer into the computer so the USB bus implementation must be USB1.1 or USB2 full speed ( 12 Mb/s ) instead of high speed ( 480 Mb/s ).
Rating:
- Quite good but...I was expecting a better product from Nikon.
The quality of the images is not the problem, in fact is quite good. I think that the first problem of the camera is that it doesn't have image stabilization, this makes virtually imposible to take pictures without flash or a tripod couse it will allways be blured.
Movies are also shaking a lot because of the same problem.
I've read about the time it takes to turn on and that it takes a lot of time to recharge the flash between shots and I bought it knowing that, but using the camera you notice that after every picture you take.
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