The Nikon Coolpix P100 is capable of doing some extraordinary things. It's chock-full of shooting options centered on a high-speed CMOS sensor married with a 26x megazoom lens. Things like high-speed photo and video shooting, fun modes and settings for near endless experimentation, and 1080p HD-quality movie recording are all here. The P100 is also well designed with easily managed controls once you spend some quality time with the extensive manual (it's paper, too). However, for all its strengths, the camera's photos (and video for that matter) just aren't that good. And for the money, that's going to be tough for a lot of people to get past. Of course, there are plenty of people who can overlook its imperfections in exchange for the heaps of wow factor the P100 packs. Which one are you?
The P100 is an overhaul inside and out of the P90. The changes include an extension of the zoom range out to 26x (just in case you were still having trouble seeing into your neighbor's house or their neighbor's house). Instead of the P90's 12-megapixel CCD sensor, the P100 uses a backside-illuminated (BSI) 10-megapixel CMOS sensor. This sensor improves shooting speed and helps reduce noise in low-light photos. It also allows Nikon to add a few specialty shooting modes that are discussed farther down.
The feel is overall very nice and amazingly compact considering the lens and all that the camera can do. The grip is deep and comfortable, the body is well balanced, and the lens barrel gives you ample space to hold and steady the camera with your left hand. Though you really don't want to use a zoom like that without a support, the camera does have sensor-shift image stabilization that Nikon calls Optical VR. Though it's difficult to hold the camera still with the zoom fully extended, the stabilization does an excellent job of minimizing blur, and when combined with Nikon's Best Shot Selector you have a better than average chance of getting a sharp shot of a still subject while holding the camera. BSS is a high-speed shooting setting that takes up to 10 shots while the shutter release is pressed and saves only the sharpest shot.
There's a decent electronic viewfinder and a vari-angle LCD for framing up your shots. The LCD pulls out from the body and can be tilted up or down, but it does not swing out horizontally from the body. Like all LCDs and EVFs, the screen blanks out for a second once you've taken a shot, but it's reasonably fast to recover. The controls are comfortably placed and responsive. On top are the Mode dial, power button, and shutter release with zoom ring. To the left of the EVF is a button for moving from viewing information on the LCD or EVF and a diopter adjustment dial. To its right is a Display button for changing what info is viewed on the displays and a movie record button with a switch for picking what type of video you want to shoot (regular or high speed). A horizontal dial above the thumb rest lets you quickly change shutter speed and aperture settings as well as zip through images and videos in playback. The rest of the controls are pretty standard: Playback, Menu, and Delete buttons and a round directional pad with an OK button at its center. The pad is used for navigating menus (which look sharper than those on older Coolpix models), adjusting timer, flash, focus, and exposure compensation settings, and searching through your photos and movies.
The battery compartment and card slot are under a door on the bottom. The battery life isn't great for this camera and using the wall adapter takes about 3 hours to fully charge the battery from zero. Outputs are under a cover on the body's left side. There's a Mini-HDMI and a USB/AV port. There's no accessory shoe for an add-on flash, limiting you to the onboard pop-up one. It doesn't automatically rise when needed; it remains off until you push a button on the left side of the camera. It's adequately powerful and there are flash exposure compensation settings available. On the short list of notably absent features is raw support (which seems silly to leave out on this model) and automatic picture orientation, something that can be found on cameras at a fraction of the P100's cost and abilities.
The shooting options are plentiful on the P100 making it much more than a point-and-shoot megazoom. (Just take a look through the chart above and you'll get a hint of what's available.) There are full manual and semimanual options with shutter speeds from 8 seconds to 1/2,000 second, and an aperture range of 10 steps of 1/3 exposure value. There are of course a bunch of scene modes, auto scene recognition, subject tracking autofocus for moving subjects, and a single spot on the Mode dial for a group of user-selected settings.
