Coolpix800 thru the eyes of a non-photographer.

I've had my Coolpix 800 for 2 years now and still love it. We've covered a lot of territory with it and it's held up well. Yes, it's even survived a couple of drops to the ground out of my hands.

I'm not going to bore you with specs. You can go to nikonusa.com for those. What you'll get here, you can't get at nikonusa.com Snippets of my experience over the past 2 years. Looking back, one of the most aggravating things about comparing digital cameras (back when i was shopping) was getting past the specs. Once I knew a camera had x-megapixels, and Aaaa x Bbbb resolution I wanted to know what current owners were doing with it, and how they liked the results. I didn't want more specs.

The Coolpix800 is more than enough to capture photos for posting to the World Wide Wed, whether for your homepage or for auction sites. We've taken snapshots of family friends so that they could use the image on their holiday newsletter. I've purchased the Nikon add-on teleconverter lens (TC-E2) so that I could get closer photographs of my wife swimming with dolphins at Discovery Cove in Orlando (so I wouldn't have to pay $20 for each of the photos they wanted to sell me). I've also purchased the add-on wide angle lens (wc-63) so that I could get more cliffs and coastlines in Nova Scotia. Both lenses are compatible with the high end consumer Nikon digitals, such as the Coolpix995, that way when I retire my Coolpix800 someday, I can take all the accessories with me.

I've purchased additional CF cards. I have a 32MB Lexar and a 64 Mb Hitachi. Both perform well. I also have stopped using the super-duper slow serial cable for transferring photos from the Coolpix (the 800 doesn't have a direct USB connection, just serial). I now pull the CF cards out and either use the sandisk pcmcia adapter (to laptop) or a sandisk usb CF card reader to my PC. When I'm taking 750 pictures during a week's vacation, USB or PCMCIA is a MUST! The Coolpix 995 apparently is USB ready, but the Coolpix 800 is not.

It took an expensive (buying batteries, that is) week at a music festival before I realized NIMH rechargeable batteries are a must. I ended up with two sets and two wall chargers, one of which has a 12v adapter to go in my car's otherwise-unused cigarette lighter. Sometimes, I'd consider getting the solar charger as well.

The photos taken in Orlando were made into 4x6 prints via Shutterfly.com and my wife didn't see any extraordinary grainy patterns except for two photos to which we did extensive cropping at the shutterly site. And even though they were a tad bit grainy, it wasn't distracting; you had to be looking for it. But that was due to something other than the camera.

The camera has 3 simulated 'film speeds' ISO 100, 200, 400. Of course you use the higher number in lower lighting, and you pick up a little more granularity in your photos. You can change the light metering between center-weighted, matrix, and spot in order to help reduce over/underexposure. This helped a little when taking either coastal shots or landscapes of large grainfields with lots of bright sky. A 35mm SLR would probably have provided more control, but hey...i'm not a photographer...and I didn't buy the coolpix800 to shoot photos for National Geographic.