This new Nikon compact camera is aimed seemingly at the advanced amateur or pro market. It has features and functionality that require an understanding of photography and dpreview concluded with this:
The Coolpix A offers DSLR-standard image quality and an excellent 28mm equivalent lens in a well-polished, pocketable camera. Its user interface will be immediately familiar to Nikon shooters and its results are dependably good. It’s not the only game in town, though, and while solid in most respects, it’s not class-leading in any respect.
The review by Jonathan Eastland in the BJP is, I think, more useful. Jonathan is a photographer of many decades and his understanding of the process of photography has been honed by years of shooting on land and at sea. External appearance is minimalist; some might say it’s sleek and neat. At almost 300 grams and just over 11cm long, its thick matt black (also available in silver chrome finish) aluminium and magnesium alloy body cover and top plates exude a sense of robustness and lasting durability. A thin leatherette grip strip on the front face seems almost like a nod to secure handling, and while I would have preferred the grip featured on Nikon’s Coolpix P7700, this narrow strip works in combination with a small rubber thumb pad on the back of the camera.
Jonathan concludes: My view after several weeks of use is that the Nikon A falls short in some areas of handling. Sleek and neat may be a good selling point, but in practice there is simply not enough substance to the front grip to endow a faultless feel-good factor. The freely rotating control wheel works, but would have been better click-stopped and incorporated into a front grip. Minor grumbles aside, image quality, white balance and colour renditions are hard to fault; the camera produces files evenly matched and graded to those of larger Nikon models. Good enough reasons to get the A.
So not a ringing endorsement, in fact he has said enough to put me off buying one but the review is exactly full of the things you want to know before buying. Camera reviews are so often full of technical specifications but so light on what it is like to use the camera and hands-on experience by someone who knows. Read the rest of Jonathan’s review here
Read more: http://www.bjp-online.com/british-journal-of-photography/test/2286791/nikons-premium-compact-camera-the-coolpix-a-tested#ixzz2bNdMLDi7
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Oxford School of Photography 