Review: Nikon AW100

Nikon AW100 RRP incl GST: $525
Contact: www.nikon.co.nz
AT A GLANCE

• Great for underwater shots
• Has some difficulty with dynamic range
• Very simple point and shoot

Tough as old boots, but the camera struggles in some more normal situations.

The Nikon AW100 is a fairly straightforward point-and-shoot camera, with the distinction of being waterproof, freezeproof and shockproof. It also features a GPS with inbuilt maps so that you can geotag photos.

It has a distinctive look, with shiny metallic front (ours was a lovely burnt orange shade) and polycarbonate plastic surround.

The controls are quite basic – it uses four rocker switches – three two-way rockers to adjust zoom, switch from shooting mode to playback mode, and access menu or delete. In addition, a four-way rocker handles menu navigation, flash, timer, macro mode and exposure compensation.

There’s full auto mode or scene selection mode, but no manual, program, aperture or shutter priority modes. It also shoots video in 1080P at 30fps, with an HDMI output to play back directly to a TV.

The three-inch, 460k-pixel LCD screen is excellent for composing photos on, and I found it straightforward to use the menu system and select the best scene mode. Camera handling in general was excellent, and it’s extremely fast at both switching on and autofocusing – it’s one of the fastest I’ve seen recently.

We took a set of calibration photographs, as well as taking it out and about to get some action shots, landscape, still life and human interest. The camera is 16-megapixel, making it one of the more high-resolution cameras we’ve seen aimed at beginner photographers.

Our calibration images were of moderate sharpness, good for a compact camera of this point-and-shoot type. We found that it handled low light well, although the flash triggers quite readily and you may end up, as I did, turning the flash off to get best results in most indoor situations. When we zoomed right into pixel-level for indoor shots, there is a little fringing around bright colours, but it won’t be noticeable for most uses, such as Facebook or full screen view.

The fringing was more of an issue when it came to bright colours in bright lighting situations, particularly when using one of the selectable scenes. Our still life flower shots (macro) had halos of colour around them that suggests an issue with colour interpolation. Surprisingly, anything green came out fine, but oranges, yellows and reds posed issues. We also discovered a slight softening effect to a couple of our landscape scene shots that were in bright lighting. Action shots worked well, though, and if you leave the camera in full auto, rather than scene, it handles almost anything except for situations of high dynamic contrast. In those cases, whites blow out, though it handles details in the darker regions well.

And what about the special features? The battery cover has a solid lock, and the housing mechanism means that there’s no chance for water to get in underneath the rocker dials to the workings beneath. We attempted some underwater shots and dropped it repeatedly from 1m to test how it handled shocks, with no ill effects, but we would have liked a lens cover for additional protection.

Overall, while this is a camera of limited flexibility, and with some weaknesses in shooting capabilities, it’s also a great little starter camera for someone wanting a gadget that can survive the slings and arrows of outrageous fortune (or a school backpack).

Thank You : http://pcworld.co.nz/