Nikon Coolpix L120

I have been recently experimenting with different digital cameras to replace my Panasonic Lumix ever since it was gifted way. My friend recently had got Nikon Coolpix L120 which incidentally was within my rather modest budget range of sub £150 and I borrowed it for a week to try it out.

1. I would term the Nikon L120 as an 'all-rounder', a term borrowed from my favourite game Cricket where the player is able to excel or atleast reasonably do well on
all fronts of the game - batting, bowling and fielding. With L120 also it is the same - it is reasonably able to please the user on nearly all fronts - looks, aesthetics, quality of the photographs, technical features and robustness.

2. It has an easy feel on the hand and is perfect even for sweaty palms as it sports a rubber texture spot for that perfect hand-grip.

3. It comes with a 3.5" LED display with a top-of-the-line resolution of 921,000 dots. However, to my own discomfort it does not have an eye viewfinder and despite
that it is quite usable in the glare of sunlight with its anti-reflecting coating on the LED it does not provide for the same level of comfort for accurate image location.

4. For a 20x optical zoom it has a reasonable size lens that sits retracted and extends only on a power-on coupled with lens-cover being removed so there is no way you could set the lens out of its casing accidentally without having the intention to do so. And believe me, this powerful zoom actually allows you to shoot billboards sitting in your car quarter of a km way and still read the advertisement on it without straining your eyes.

5. However, the camera colour sensitivity leaves lot to be desired as all outdoor landscapes had a lot more tinge of green in it and a lot less reds and its various
hues. For instance the grass looked greener while the surrounding patch of red soil looked dull.

6. But I would also concede that it does provide an in-built D-Lighting to maintain the colour intensity and highlight hidden details. And to its advantage is its own image-editing software NX-2 that allows a plethora of image-editing capabilities besides a D-lighting enhancement filter feature.

7. It is not possible for one to miss out on an event with this camera as it has the ability to do 'on the fly' photo adjustments, an essential requirement for an event photography.

8. It however misses out on having manual controls for aperture and shutter speed settings. An important feature also missing is the hot shoe for the flash.

7. A rather well-thought out feature which incidentally is more beneficial than can be possible imagined is the nifty zoom selecting lever around the lenses that allows one to zoom in and out with the still hand rather than constantly change hands during the duration of shooting the video (as it is in most other cameras in this genre).

8. It does have the ususal Vibration Reduction feature to stop shakes during shooting a video but what it offers more for image stabilisation is that in addition to the sensor-shift mechanical VR one could combine two successive shots in-video camera to get a vibration free result. Naturally it would, though, take a slightly
longer time to shoot in this mode.

9. And for once we have a camera that's not a SLR but has the look, feel and aesthetics of a SLR. But it does have one feature that is more SLRish - ability to take excellent Panorama photos without the need of an in-built panorama stich feature through Panorama Assist that overlays small portions of photos onto the next shot composition along with the Panorama Maker software for editing.

10. It is powered by 4 R6/AA-size batteries which are easily available in any store. It should last long enough to not strain the purse though the camera was not is use long enough for me to make any conclusion.

11. It comes with the usual storage memory which unfortunately is housed along with the batteries which do not have an clip-in so it rarely happens that you do not manage to drop the batteries on the floor as soon you start shifting cards.

Worth pound for pound.