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| Photo by Mark Lent |
| Click photo for more images taken by the Nikon Coolpix P5100. |
One of the Nikon Coolpix P5100's most useful features is the hotshoe mount located on the top left corner of the camera. The mount is identical to those found on Nikon's DSLR cameras and can accept and use the same i-TTL flash units with full functionality. During evaluation, we placed a Speedlight SB-800 onto the camera and used it with great success. Of course, the flash itself was bigger than the camera body and was awkward to shoot with, but it worked well and produced some very fine results -- particularly since we have the ability to modify aperture and shutter speeds while using the TTL flash. Using this feature in conjunction with Nikon's SC-29 off-camera TTL cable will allow you to shoot with a high degree of control in off-camera lighting situations. This ability is, in our opinion, a truly wonderful option for a camera in this price range.
Manual Exposure Modes
Along with the hotshoe is a full manual exposure mode that allows you to choose both shutter and aperture settings. The system works, but is difficult to navigate and use. It is frustrating when you have a navigation button that toggles back and forth between manual exposure settings and unrelated functions, such as flash options or switching between portrait focus, landscape focus and macro focus. This is the main issue with the manual exposure mode in the P5100. Nikon would have been prudent to follow the designs of some of their competitors and assign distinct buttons that are dedicated to exposure control. Pentax did this many years ago with the shutter speed settings on the ME Super and it was a system that worked very well. Even with the navigation issues in the manual exposure mode, the ability to control flash, shutter speed and aperture in a compact camera is wonderful and in theory, this is great, but the practical side needs work.
When you use manual exposure in compact point and shoot cameras, you'll notice that the aperture settings seem limited and will generally top-out at f/8. The reason for this is more Newtonian than Dickensian -- the apertures with these small lenses begin to experience diffraction at settings below f/8 and as a result, the sharpness of the image suffers. Additionally, the actual focal length of these lenses is so short that f/8 will almost always give you enough depth-of-field for even the most demanding landscape images, so to go beyond f/8 in essence is pointless and unnecessary.
Optical Viewfinder versus LCD Viewfinder
One of the most frustrating situations photographers run into when using an LCD viewfinder are those really dark rooms or bright days when the sun is directly overhead. Nikon has addressed this problem by incorporating an optical viewfinder into the Coolpix P5100. However, because the finder and the lens are positioned differently, there are some parallax concerns and what you see in the viewfinder isn't composed exactly as the final image. Another issue with the finder is that it's very small and sometimes difficult to see through. There is also no diopter adjustment available for the viewfinder and users who wear glasses will have difficulties using this feature.
Another issue that we noticed is that there appears to be a significant amount of image cropping in the viewfinder in comparison to what's shown on the LCD screen. Nikon states that it shows 80% of the image area, but this seems quite generous when the camera is mounted on a tripod and you're viewing the identical composition in the optical and LCD viewfinders. The lesson here is that when framing is critical, use the LCD viewfinder for the most accurate composition of your images.
One bonus for the viewfinder though is that it does zoom in-and-out in conjunction with the lens, which helps to anticipate the framing in the final image. Much of this difference may deal with ensuring that the image area shown in the finder is recorded in the final image because of parallax differences. Other cameras deal with this same situation though and don't constrict the viewpoint as severely as Nikon does with the P5100. Even with these shortfalls, Nikon has realized that this is a useful feature and preferable to many in comparison to viewing the scene solely on an LCD screen. Another nuisance with using the viewfinder is that if I place my hands onto the grip, I tend to see my right hand index finger blocking a significant portion of the view in the finder!
Video Mode
The P5100 also shoots VGA quality video with a resolution of 640X480 pixels at a rate of 30 frames per second. One nice feature of this mode is the ability to zoom in and out while recording video. Another goodie is that the lens' VR technology acts as a "steadycam" when shooting video. While it doesn't clear up all motion, it reduces it significantly. The P5100 also has a host of different shooting modes for video as well, ranging in Full 640x480 stereo sound to one-quarter sized 160-pixel width movies for the Web. Surprisingly, the P5100 also has an option for black and white movies and sepia-toned flicks as well.
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