Nikon CP950E

This is my second digital camera if you don't count the web cams. The previous camera was a Kodak DC50, which was adequate for its time but is now yesterday's news. The 950 is the hot camera of the first half of 1999. Like all hot items, it will cool rapidly, but right now it makes me feel warm and toasty.

The camera features incredible macro capabilities, focusing in to take images about 20 mm across. Exposure controls let you take images up to 8 seconds with a nominal 80 ISO capture which can be pushed an extra couple of stops (supposedly to ISO 400, but I calculate ISO 320 by adding the extra +2 EV. You can shoot in manual or auto mode, with aperture or shutter priority in manual mode. The built-in flash is OK at 2 m, but is too powerful for close work and images are subject to red-eye if you don't take care to avoid it. The anti-red-eye feature is not particularly aggressive, so blondes look like creatures of the night until you edit the eyes.

This is a swivel design which lets you take pictures at odd angles without contorting yourself (and which some people think adds a weak spot to the camera). I like that, but the LCD is difficult to use in bright sun since it lacks a solar assist. Using NiMH batteries I get about 100 exposures per charge, so boosting the LCD would cut back on that number way too much. Win some, lose some.

Focused images are generally crisp and clear, particularly in macro mode. Some people have complained that the focus is softer in landscape mode. It may be, but not objectionably so. Low light behaviour is acceptable - some people have complained about focusing in low light, but generally if I can capture an image the AF works OK (On the other hand, I try to avoid flash, so I don't usually work in deep darkness). The lens is a 7 mm - 21 mm zoom with digital zoom adding a further 2.5x expansion. Digital zoom results in a lousy image (on any camera) so I don't use it. If you want exreme zooming capability you can get a camcorder descendant such as a Sony (which goes to 14x optical zoom), but I don't like the image quality on the ones I've seen, and I don't like SmartMedia cards or (ugh!) floppy storage.

An 8 Mb CF is supplied, and it can take any size type I CF card. The IBM minidisk is a type II, so that's not possible, but with this camera I wouldn't want to go much beyond 128 Mb anyway. In 'NORMAL' mode that would hold 256 shots, or about 16 uncompressed TIFF images. I blew my budget on the camera and an Epson 750 printer, so at the moment I'm shooting with the supplied card, offloading to my Powerbook via a PC card adapter. When I had a 32 Mb card things were great, but then someone lifted my card from the table while I was swapping cards and batteries in a restaurant. I can't believe the way that happened...anyway, now I'm waiting for a 48 Mb card which is actually cheaper than the 32 Mb card.

Comparable cameras: Olympus C2000Z. Possibly Fuji 2900, but not the 2700, which doesn't have the Nikon or Oly's level of control over exposure. None of the current consumer grade Kodaks as far as I can tell.