Nikon's New Camera Range

Nikon announced eight new Coolpix cameras. The range starts from $110 model L19 to the $400 Coolpix P90. The range is quit surprising of each camera. They are cheap, but they certainly don't fell it.

The model S220, it costs $150. The camera doesn't have all fancy new gizmos found on its brethren, but we get some truly useful features -- 10 megapixels, image stabilization, a decent 3x zoom with the 2.5mm LCD screen. And nice to have features include a "blink-proof" mode.

The S630, it costs $270, notable for it 3" touch screen and lens that is 28mm at the wide end. The screen is used to control the usual functions. In addition, you can scrawl on your pictures with stylus to personalize and expression. This is pretty neat, means you can annotate snaps and use your camera as digital notebook.

Finally, we'll visit the top end P90, at a reasonable $400. You get everything mentioned above (except the gimmicky touch screen) along with enough extras to keep you playing for weeks. First, the lens. This uses Nikon's ED (Extra-low Dispersion) glass, found in the company's pro-level SLR lenses and crams in a massive 24x zoom – an optical zoom – which starts at 26mm and ends up at a ridiculous 624mm at the far end. Make sure you have the image stabilization switched on. Nikon sensibly decided to keep the pixel count at "just" 12MP, allowing the above mentioned 6400 ISO mode. The LCD screen is a 3" monster and can be flipped out and twisted, and when you hit the shutter release you can let the camera scream away at 15 frames per second for up to 45 frames.

Now it's time to start doing things that file cameras never could.