The Proof is in the Pictures

Here’s a couple shots taken with my new Nikon P-300 with everything set to full automatic (pictures for idiots) mode.

This shot is basically the same one I have taken with my 35mm and the Holga (see Sept 28 post). Not bad! The 35mm shot is much sharper and the color saturation is better. The Holga is, well, it’s a Holga – what can I say?

Here’s another interesting shot, sharpness is good. Color is okay.  I brightened things up a bit in Picasa (it’s a digital shot after all so no foul there) because this time of year the sun is setting earlier so this one was a little dark.

I am really impressed with the sharpness and overall performance of night time shots like this one. I guess it’s the vibration reduction function that allowed me to hand hold this ½ second shot and still get a clear sharp image.

So far I am pretty happy with this little camera. The quality of the pictures is good. The menus are easy to navigate and the controls are intuitive (for me at least). I appreciate the compact size that lets me carry it in my shirt pocket but sometimes I wish I had a little more to hang onto when actually taking a picture. Yeah, I know, you can’t have everything!

It does have aperture priority, shutter priority as well as full manual mode and the controls are fairly straight forward and simple to use for any of those. It also has a Program mode which I haven’t figured out yet, and then there’s all those scenes and special effects modes. I haven’t done anything with those yet either.  The lens/sensor combination (on automatic) is plenty fast and allowed me to take night shots that came out pretty good. The built in flash is of limited power but decent. The camera and flash worked together seamlessly to produce pretty good pictures with no “red eye,” so far.

Once I get more familiar with it I will try some tougher assignments and let you know just how user friendly it really is.