The Sunset Wizard and a Nikon Coolpix P7700

This photo was taken with the new Nikon Coolpix P7700 camera that just hit the shelves this past Friday. I bought mine on Saturday. This was shot in the automatic mode just to see what it would do.

I have been looking for a high end point and shoot for about a year now and Nikon finally made one I thought would fit the bill. This does just about everything a DSLR does but in a smaller package. Now don't think I'll be giving up my DSLR anytime soon but I wanted something I could carry around when I didn't want to carry a big camera. (Think sitting in a restaurant beach side watching the sun go down)

The Nikon P7700 has a 28-200mm equivalent lens with f stops from f2.0 to f4.0 at the far end. It shoots 8 frames a second however the buffer only holds 6 frames so you don't get the full effect of the 8 FPS. All of the important controls, ISO, Quality, WB, Exposure, Aperture, Shutter Speed and Bracketing are on the outside of the camera and can be adjusted on the fly. Yes, bracketing! Up to five frames with adjustable exposure. There is also a wheel to switch from automatic to aperture or shutter speed or full manual along with the obligatory scene modes. There are also three user defined spots on this wheel so you can set the camera to a specific setting, including lens zoom and it will go back to those settings just by turning the wheel to user 1, 2 or 3.

The camera has command and sub-command dials on it just like the big boys and in the same spots so the transition from one camera to another isn't brain taxing. The P7700 has two function buttons on it that can be set to handle different adjustments in the camera including a built in ND filter. From what I can tell it looks like the ND filter is just two stops and you can't change it but it may come in handy. The lens will take its own screw on filters such as a UV or CPL or even darker ND filters if you want. It has a 12.2mp CMOS sensor and start up is very quick. It lags a little when you switch from one mode to another but once you're used to that it's not a problem.

One of the best things, and a big reason I wanted this camera, is that it will shoot in RAW. It's actually an NRW file instead of an NEF file but it works the same as the NEF file it is just different because of the different type of sensor. I'm still waiting for Adobe to update their files so that the RAW converter in photoshop will open these files but I was told that should only take about a week.

There are two small things I have found so far that annoy me just a little. The first is the exposure compensation wheel on top of the camera moves a little easier than I like. I think this may need some type of lock or a heavier drag because I have found myself accidentally changing the exposure just by hitting this wheel with my thumb. The other thing I have found is that the lowest aperture you can use is f8, which for a point and shoot isn't bad but I would like to see it go to f10 or better.

One thing I might mention is that if you are shooting in the RAW or NRW format you will definitely need a high speed memory card. I took a 60 second exposure with the camera on NRW + JPEG fine and it took almost a full 60 seconds to write the image to a class 4 SD card. I would highly recommend a class 10 card that writes at 45MBs if you are going to shoot in RAW.

The P7700 doesn't have an optical viewfinder so you are relagated to using the fully articulating 3 inch screen on the back. This hasn't been a problem so far and if you are using a point and shoot now you may never now it's not there.

I'm still playing with this camera and will for months to come so expect to see more pictures from the fancy point and shoot. I will be carrying it around in places I normally wouldn't take a camera so there's no telling what kind of pictures you might get to see!