Nikon Coolpix P300 photos

The P300 has a basic and functional, compact-but-not-too-small design that should appeal to more-advanced shooters. It includes a wide-angle 4.2x zoom lens with a fast maximum aperture of f1.8.

A generous set of manual controls and stereo microphone are among the P300's relatively high-end feature set.

The interface is pretty straightforward, for both basic and advanced shooting functions, with big, easy-to-read text. The menu and delete buttons feel a little too flat, but otherwise the layout feels and works well.

The P300 strikes a good balance between size and usability; it's not too thin to hold comfortably, and not too big that you'll leave it at home.

You do have to jump into the menus to adjust most of the advanced shooting controls, but the menus are pretty sparse so it's not too onerous. Oddly, the camera lacks a spot metering setting (though it's possible that was just a bug in our preproduction unit).

I don't know why, but I really like this basic interface for adjusting exposure compensation, hue, and vividness.