I was a big fan of Nikon, but this Nikon L3 really disappointed me.
I still have a professional, traditional, film Nikon camera and the pictures are just great. I had then a Nikon Coolpix 2100 as a point-and-shoot digital camera and it was absolutely fine. Then in October last year I decided to upgrade the Coolpix 2100 to something better. I thought 5 million pixels would be enough, so I bought a Nikon Coolpix L3, the new generation of Coolpix. Big mistake…

- 5 megapixels
- Nikkor 3x optical zoom lens (38-116mm in 35mm equivalent)
- Macro focus with AF as close as 1.6 inches
- The D-Lighting function that selects and creates a copy of images with excessive backlight or insufficient flash illumination, adding light and detail wherever needed while keeping other areas as they were
- The Face-priority AF function automatically detects and then focuses in on people’s faces, regardless of where they are in the frame, ensuring superb crisp-focus portraits
- The In-Camera Red-Eye Fix function analyzes each image, automatically finding and then correcting the accidental red-eye that sometimes occurs in flash photography, for more natural-looking portraits.
- You have a choice of 15 different Scene modes – 4 with Scene assist – makes it so much easier to achieve desired results in a wide range of everyday situations.
- Large 2.0-inch glare-resistant color monitor (but NO optical viewfinder), which worked pretty well even if exposed in bright sunlight
- 640x480 @ 30fps movie mode w/sound, length limited only by memory card capacity
- Built-in flash with auto, fill, slow sync, and red-eye reduction
- 23MB internal memory and SD memory card slot (If you have this camera, then buy yourself a 1GB SD card, you can find one now for 15 pounds)
- USB connectivity, PictBridge direct-print compliant
- Powered by two standard AA type batteries (this is what I liked always at Nikon, some of their cameras allow you to use standard AA batteries, so you can never get without a battery just when getting “that special picture”, as you can buy them everywhere

- The pictures are not great at all ! The quality is worse than the Coolpix 2100, a lot of noise and colors did not reflect the real world. Even if modified via a Professional Picture Software, you can tell the quality is not so great. And I can’t afford to spend 30 minutes per picture to get a quality that it should be there delivered by the camera itself
- Is taking forever to take a shoot. You press the button and it takes few seconds to take the picture. And your shoot is gone. We have a 3 years old daughter and we missed so many pictures because of that !
- The flash adds a monumental almost 15-20 seconds between shoots you can take, rendering the camera useless for taking pictures.
- Indoor pictures and low light ones are just rubbish. If I use the flash, is not powerful enough, not even in 2-3 meters (even it says in the features that works up until 3 metres). If I don't use the flash in low light and choose specific scenes, the picture gets blurry. Every time !! Even if using a tripod ! I mean, this is what the camera itself tells me ( the camera has a Blur Warning, which detects camera movement during the exposure, warning you that the image is blurred and giving you the choice of saving the picture or not. If you are satisfied, you can save it; if not, you can retake it with flash or Best Shot Selector on, ensuring that you leave with a better image)
- The movies (which are QuickTime) are OK, but the sound can be affected by the smallest of noise (like wind blowing very-very mild - on the movie it sounds like shooting in a storm…)

One really good thing about the L3 was the battery life, with NiMH rechargeable batteries I was able to take over 100 pictures, with around 40% being taken with flash.