Hitting the Streets with Nikon's CoolPix P90 & Flat Stanley
The day I received a Nikon CoolPix P90 to review, I also received a letter from my grandson, who lives an airplane ride away from our home in the New Jersey Alps. It seems his kindergarten class has been reading a book about a boy named Stanley Lambchop, who somehow gets flattened when his bulletin board falls on him as he slept leaving him, well, 'letter size' so-to-speak.
Before you know it 'Flat Stanley's parents start mailing him all around the country to visit family and friends. And why not? Even William Shattner can't find a one-way ticket from JFK-to-LAX for 43-cents.
To personalize things and add an interactive twist to the experience all of the kids in the class sent crayon-colored paper cutouts of Flat Stanley to family and friends all over the place with a request to take Flat Stanley along to work, shopping, playing, etc. and keep a diary – with pictures when possible – of all the places you take him. In literary circles we call this a storyline. Enter the Nikon CoolPix P90.
The CoolPix P90 is Nikon's idea of what a bridge-style digicam should look, feel, and perform like. Contained within a palm-sized, low-profile housing, the P90 boasts a 14-element 4.6-110.4/2.8-5 Nikon ED zoom lens, which according to the math equals a 26-624 mm equivalent on a full-frame '35'. Optically speaking, you can shoot detailed images of pretty much anything and everything within a quarter-mile of wherever you happen to be.
Images are captured and recorded by 12.1 megapixel imaging sensor and processed by a Nikon EXPEED image processor, which is responsible for techno-wizardry including ISO ratings up to 6400 and burst-rates of up to 15fps (at 3MP or lower), D-Lighting for maintaining detail in the shadow and highlight areas, true color, the right balance of contrast, and overall picture quality.
Depending on your particular needs, JPEGs can be captured in a choice of 12 compression ratios. Video and sound are captured as AVI and WAV files respectively.
Because things can get shaky when shooting towards the long end of the zoom range, the P90 relies on several stabilization technologies including Nikon Optical VR Image Stabilization, automatic ISO boosts when the lights go low, and Nikon's Best Shot Selector (BSS) which fires off a burst of 10 images, automatically seeks out the sharpest image of the bunch, and deep-sixes the losers.
Menus and function controls are straightforward and are easy to figure out with or without the manual. The P90's tiltable (45° downward, 90° upward) 3", 230,000-dot LCD is easy to use when scrolling the menus or composing pictures and can be set to a choice of 5 brightness levels. Under brighter lighting conditions (the beach, the slopes, etc) you'll probably opt for the P90's electronic viewfinder, which while not as lovable as a true optical finder, beats squinting (and cussing) at an LCD any day of the week.
The P90 was well suited for the task of chronicling Stanley as he ventured forth on a chilly March day into the canyons of Manhattan. First stop… the 248th annual St. Paddy's day parade up 5th Ave. To my surprise Stanley was instantly recognized by oodles of parade attendees who remembered him from their own grade school days, including a retired teacher who included Flat Stanley in her lesson plans for 37 years.
Me? I never heard of him before I opened the envelope. But my new best buddy Stanley made it easy pickin's for testing out the P90's Face Recognition function. (It works fine)
One of the attributes I liked the best about the P90 was the fact the lens captures the drama of a 26mm lens, which aside from my personal love of anything wider than 28mm, made it easy to fudge the perspective and make Stanley far taller than his actual 8-and-a-half inch height. Angled properly, he actually blended into the landscape. But then again, Jack the Ripper can blend into the landscape in the Big Apple.
 |
 |
The long end of the P90's zoom range is equally impressive, and with an equivalent focal length of 624 mm you're pretty much covered to capture most anything that will come your way. Distant vistas can be brought within sniffing distance, though you should brace yourself because VR or no VR, the image jumps around like you wouldn't believe at the long end of the focal range. In fact it's a good idea to compose images using the EVF when shooting long shots so you can brace the camera against your brow and/or bridge of your nose for added stability. (Handholding any camera while peering at an LCD at arms-length with a 500-plus mm lens isn't advisable under the best of circumstances.)
If you plan on doing a lot of shooting at the long end of the zoom range you might also want to look into purchasing a compact travel tripod or tablepod. Close-ups on the other hand proved easy to do with macro focusing on the P90 possible down to 0.4" from the front lens element.
The Nikon CoolPix P90 is as close as you can get to an entry-level DSLR such as a Nikon D40x without jumping the fence. Though not true DSLRs, bridge cameras (a.k.a. Tweeners) are increasingly becoming popular as a one-camera travel option due to their compact design, ever improving image quality, and fixed zooms with focal lengths that take you from here to there with a flip of a finger.
| 
