Nikon Coolpix 880

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The Nikon CoolPix 880, a smaller, more affordable alternative to the well-received Coolpix 990, is a sleek camera that has great image quality, fits easily into a pocket, and boasts just about every photographic feature you can think of. This camera has so many features, in fact, that it may seem overwhelming--not to mention pricey--to inexperienced photographers.

Crisp And Juicy
Like the Coolpix 990, the 880 has outstanding image quality. This 3.3-megapixel miniwonder takes large, crisp, colorful images and allows you to easily send them along to your PC via USB. You have the option of selecting image sizes ranging from a low-resolution, 640-by-480-pixel image to a higher-quality, 2,048-by-1,536-pixel image. In addition to its functionality and ease, during our jury tests, the 880 produced some of the finest indoor and outdoor shots we have seen from comparable cameras.

The Coolpix 880 nearly goes overboard on features, again mimicking this characteristic of its sibling, the 990. The camera is built around a 2.5X zoom lens with 4X digital zoom, and it includes several extras such as Burst mode, video out, and a QuickTime Movie Capture mode. Serious photographers will be pleased to find a wide choice of options, from aperture priority to ISO settings, to shutter speed, and plenty more.

A Camera Complex
This is no point-and-shoot camera. The countless buttons, functions, and features on the Coolpix 880 are a bit daunting at first and will no doubt confuse beginners. The nearly 200-page guide certainly explains how the camera's controls work, but the book doesn't give an amateur a sense of when or why to use many of these features. Most setting changes require diving into menus and submenus, adding even more confusion to an already puzzling interface.

Once you have found your way through the interface, shooting pictures with the Coolpix 880 produces yet another set of problems. When you press the shutter button, the camera requires a full second to capture the image. This 1-second lapse can really ruin action shots. What's more, in medium light, you may miss some shots entirely when the camera simply refuses to take a picture because the flash isn't ready. The solution is to press the shutter button and wait for the flash to charge or to disable the Flash mode. In the meantime, though, your subject may be either getting impatient or getting away. Consequently, you'll need timing, skill, and a little luck to snap well-composed action pictures.

Power Struggle
For all of its strengths, the Coolpix 880 stumbles when it comes to battery power; it's an energy hog, able to take only about 250 shots with a single set of batteries. We advise purchasing a set of rechargeable cells and an adapter/recharger.

Beginners will probably find this camera to be more confusing than useful and won't even touch most of the features. On the other hand, serious photographers who like to tinker will appreciate its depth of features, not to mention its very convenient size.