Nikon Coolpix 5000Nikon moves into the 5 megapixel era with a new chip, new lens, and new body, but no retreat from the legendary Nikon feature set!<<Design :(Previous) | (Next): Optics>> Page 4:ViewfinderReview First Posted: 9/18/2001 |
Viewfinder
The Coolpix 5000 offers a real-image optical viewfinder, as well as a color LCD monitor for composing images. The optical viewfinder zooms along with the lens, but does not reflect any digital zoom (which requires the LCD monitor to be active). A diopter adjustment dial adjusts the view to accommodate eyeglass wearers. The viewfinder optics have a fairly high eyepoint, meaning that most eyeglass wearers should have little trouble using the viewfinder for framing. Another nice touch is that the viewfinder eyepiece is close enough to the left edge of the camera that right-eyed users can use it comfortably without mashing their noses against the back of the camera.
The 1.8-inch, 110,000-dot, low-temperature polysilicon TFT LCD monitor features a swivel design. The LCD monitor actually lifts up off of the back panel, flipping out toward the left side of the camera. Once opened, the LCD monitor can swivel around to face upwards or downwards with a radius of 270 degrees. You can also turn the LCD monitor around to face the camera and then close it to protect the monitor from any accidental scratches. I really like swiveling LCD designs, as they greatly increase the camera's shooting flexibility, allowing you to hold the camera at a variety of angles and still clearly see the LCD display.
A nice touch in the Coolpix 5000's LCD viewfinder implementation is that you can adjust not only the viewfinder brightness, but it's color (hue) as well. A menu option lets you adjust the viewfinder color either towards the blue or towards the red, to help match the viewfinder display to the actual color balance of the captured images. I applaud this, but note that having control only over blue/red tints is only a partial solution. (Technically, you need separate controls for red, green, and blue, in order to be able to completely control the display color. You could get away with only varying two of these relative to the third, and I suspect that full control would result in a bewildering user interface, but would still like to see some attempt to offer more complete color adjustment. Nikon does deserve significant credit for providing any sort of LCD hue adjustment at all though.)
The Coolpix 5000 carries over a unique feature from the 995 and 990 before it, itself borrowed from Nikon's high-end film cameras: The powerful zone-based autofocus system. The camera can automatically choose between five different autofocus zones, or you can lock it in on any one of them manually. Either way, the viewfinder displays all five zones, and highlights the currently active one in red. Very slick!
A particularly nice feature that was new on the Coolpix 995, but that's since appeared on the 885 as well, is the "quick review" function. This lets you quickly check the last exposure while still in record mode, simply by pressing the Quick Review button above the LCD screen. This isn't an uncommon feature on digicams, but what's absolutely unique on the Coolpix cameras is its "picture in picture" review mode (shown here), which opens a playback window in the upper left-hand corner of the display screen, while keeping the viewfinder image live on the remaining LCD area. Note too, that this image isn't restricted to the most recently captured photo: You can scroll through all the images on the memory card by pressing the rocker button arrows. The first press of the Quick button activates the picture in picture review mode, a second press enables full-screen playback, and a third press returns you to full capture mode. At any point, pressing the shutter button returns you to capture mode and snaps a picture. Cool!
In Playback mode, the LCD offers a wealth of information via several display pages. In total, no fewer than five information screens are available, accessed by turning the Command wheel. The first display is the standard Playback information readout, which reports the date and time of the shot, file name, quality setting, and the image number on the card. The next two screens report a long listing of camera and exposure settings, including the firmware version, focal length, shutter speed, ISO, etc. A fourth information page shows a histogram view of the image, illustrating the distribution of brightness values in the image, with the left edge corresponding to pure black, and the right edge to pure white. Once you learn how to read it, a histogram is phenomenally useful in determining whether you've managed to capture a good exposure or not. Ideally, a well-exposed image would produce a histogram curve that just filled the graph from left to right, indicating that it contained a full range of tonal values. The final information screen shows lens, shutter, and focus settings, and indicates (by the green brackets) what the autofocus system had locked onto when the picture was taken. Histogram displays won't always show you if only a small portion of your image is blown-out: To address this need, the 5000 blinks those parts of the image that are overexposed, letting you see exactly where you're losing highlight detail. Very nice, I'd like to see more manufacturers adopt this feature!
Also in Playback mode, the LCD offers a thumbnail index display, showing either four or nine images to a page depending on the setting. The index display is controlled by the zoom lever: Pressing the wide-angle side of the zoom lever increases the number of thumbnails displayed (from 1 to 4 to 9), while pressing the telephoto side decreases "zooms in", decreasing the number from 9 to 4 to 1. If you continue pressing the telephoto end of the zoom lever in playback mode, a playback zoom feature enlarges the image up to 6x, letting you get a pretty good idea of how well-focused the image is, check the framing, and examine details to see if you got the shot you wanted. When you're zoomed in on an image, you can pan around the image with the rocker control.
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