By polydegmon “polym” (jupiter, fl USA)

I’ve been toying with the idea of getting a digital for years but I wasn’t sold on the picture quality, (without spending a great deal of money) and I’m frankly a film snob. I have a vintage Fuji SLR and a Canon Photura which both produce great shots but are cumbersome to chase the kids around with.


I wanted something easy to set, with minimal buttons so my kids could use it as well, but with a quality worth printing at least a 5×7 with. The specs are well detailed in the description so I’ll just go general. I found the camera very intuitive. I haven’t looked at the manual but all the modes are easy to figure out by the ‘press a button and see what happens’ method. Editing on the fly is quick and easy, the video I took looks as good as a minidv tape, the pictures blow up well. It fits in my front jean pocket or in a small matching Samsonite hardcase I found for $4. With a 2 GB card I can do 30 minutes of video or about a thousand pictures. This camera is advertised as long life batteries and so far I’ve done about 200 photos and 15 minutes of video on the supplied batteries. One negative is the shutter time - when using flash mode it is s-l-o-w. You can’t catch something quickly, you’re going to get three or five seconds after you think you are. However, turning the flash off made this shutter as fast as my Photura, (if not as fast as my SLR) but still had a lag time between shots. It’s a trade I can live with since the multiple exposure settings make it easy to compensate for not using the flash. The design is excellent. I’m left handed and a lot of things designed for one handed use annoy me by placing buttons where a left handed user will hit the wrong ones. Although there are three buttons on the top of the camera, I had no problem at all with this. The kids are very interested in the stop motion feature. While I got this as a snap shot camera for my own use, it would be an excellent choice for an 8 year old’s first camera. I spent a long time (about a year) choosing between a Nikon, Canon or Kodak model. I think the Nikon was the right way to go for ease of use, results, and visual styling. Couldn’t be happier with it.

• Read More About Nikon Coolpix L14

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