Nikon Coolpix 8400 - digital camera review: Nikon Coolpix 8400 - digital camera

Intro
With a wide-angle view that equals the perspective of a 35mm-film camera's 24mm lens, or 18mm with optional converter, the Nikon Coolpix 8400 is perfect for shooting indoors in tight quarters or for grabbing shots outdoors of an exquisite 18th-century monument when you're backed up against a 21st-century fruit stand. Add the optional 0.75X converter attachment, and you're in 18mm (35mm equivalent) bliss. Yet, the 3.5X optical zoom also extends out to 85mm--perfect for portraits and some sports. Priced $100 less than its bigger (literally) sibling, the Coolpix 8800, this model incorporates most of the best features, missing only Nikon's built-in vibration reduction system, which, unfortunately, would be perfect for those shooting wide-angle pictures indoors at slow shutter speeds without a tripod. Other downers are pronounced barrel distortion at the widest zoom settings and a viewfinder that tends to freeze and blank out during use. If you need a wide-angle shooter and want a smaller package than you'll find in the most petite dSLR, the Coolpix 8400 may fill the bill.

Editor's note: We have changed the rating in this review to reflect recent changes in our rating scale. Click here to find out more.

The Nikon Coolpix 8400's plastic-clad magnesium-alloy chassis weighs a hair more than 17 ounces, almost half a pound lighter than its sibling the 8800 and, because it doesn't have that camera's huge 10X zoom lens, measures a more compact 4.5 by 3.2 by 3.0 inches. Still, it's quite a handful, and it has the same complement of controls, although they're arranged somewhat differently.

The top of the camera is dominated by a mode dial that includes choices for picture review, full autoexposure, programmed exposure, shutter and aperture priority, manual control, scene modes, and movies. Four other positions switch you into setup, image size/quality, ISO sensitivity, and white-balance adjustments. The top surface is also home to a flip-up flash, a hotshoe for attaching an external strobe unit, and a monochrome LCD status panel with backlight. The handgrip offers more controls, including a shutter-release button with power lever and buttons for adjusting flash mode and exposure-value settings. There's also a Func key to activate either of two custom user settings and to toggle between shutter speed and f-stop functions for the rear command dial when in manual exposure mode.

Although less bulky than the 8800, this is not a camera for one-handed operation. You'll want to wrap your right hand around the grip, poise your index finger over the shutter-release button, rest your thumb on the rear-panel power zoom rocker, and support the left side of the camera with your other hand.

The back panel's controls include an autoexposure/autofocus lock button located to the right of the diopter-adjustable EVF. The manual focus/autofocus control button and the EVF/LCD selector keys, located respectively on the 8800 on the left side of the lens and next to the EVF, are underneath the 1.8-inch LCD. Other controls on the back panel include buttons for menu, quick review, self-timer/trash, and display content (which can include a live histogram), as well as a four-way cursor-control pad with center OK button.

The Coolpix 8400's three-level menu system works efficiently to change shooting options or to adjust playback features during picture review. Nikon's MyMenu system lets you define which 6 of the 21 different choices in the full menu system appear on the main screen.

Lacking the vibration reduction system of its more expensive sibling, the Nikon Coolpix 8400's wide zoom lens garners much of the attention. Digital cameras equipped with a 39mm (equivalent) wide-angle lens offer only about a 56-degree angle of view; this camera's 24mm (equivalent) focal length translates into a whopping 84-degree perspective, which makes even the Coolpix 8800's 35mm widest setting look like a short telephoto in comparison. Nikon kept the 8400 compact by limiting the telephoto end to 85mm (equivalent).

The maximum aperture varies from f/2.8 at the wide-angle setting to f/4.9 at the tele end, and the Coolpix's macro capabilities let you focus as close as 1.2 inches, using center autofocus or automatic multiarea focus that concentrates on one of five areas around the center of the viewfinder. Or you can choose any of nine autofocus areas manually with the cursor pad or focus manually.

You can select from four automatic exposure options or use the built-in meter to set exposure manually. Auto choices include a 256-segment matrix, center-weighted, or spot exposure, as well as an option that uses the current autofocus region to calculate exposure. Exposures are set using the optimum aperture, and shutter speeds range from 8 seconds to 1/3,000 second in manual as well as shutter- or aperture-priority modes but are limited to no more than 2 seconds in Auto and Program modes. You can fine-tune the camera's calculated exposure by plus or minus 2EV in 1/3EV increments.

If you're handing the camera to a neophyte and want to avoid lengthy explanations, there are 15 scene modes suitable for just about every snapshooting situation, including Portraits, Party/Indoor, Night Portraits, Beach/Snow, Landscape, Sunset, Night Landscape, Museum, Fireworks, Close-Up, Copy, Back Light, Panorama Assist, Sports, and Dusk/Dawn.

Sports photographers and others annoyed by wimpy flash units will appreciate the 8400's Speedlight options. Serious flash shooters will want to consider Nikon's versatile SB600 and SB800 external flash units, which slide into the flash shoe or can be linked with a cable for extra power. The 8400 can control these units' zooming flash-head capabilities.

Nikon's Best Shot Selector lets you shoot multiple exposures but automatically chooses and saves only the best one, using varying criteria. For example, standard Best Shot mode can crank out 10 shots in a row, examine them for sharpness, and save the one with the most detail.

Or you can command the camera to evaluate a series of images and preserve the one with the most highlight or shadow detail or the best overall exposure. There's also an autobracketing feature that will bracket exposure or white balance and save three or five variations for you to choose from later on.

Another way to hedge your bets is to use the five-shot-buffer routine, which lets you take pictures continually at 0.7fps but saves only the last five when you release the shutter button. This is a useful feature for action shots of events where you're unsure when the peak moment might occur.

Movie capabilities include capture of 640x480-pixel clips at 30fps for up to 60 seconds or, if you're looking for longer sequences, at 320x240 pixels and 15fps to the capacity of your memory card. Other motion options let you shoot at 5fps at 320x240 pixels for an old-time movie look or in time-lapse mode to grab more than 1,000 shots using five preset intervals ranging from 1 to 60 minutes. While some other digital cameras offer more flexibility in choosing intervals, Nikon's settings suffice for your average flower-blooming sequence.

In-camera editing includes an option to reduce full-resolution images to 640x480 pixels or smaller when you need a compact shot for e-mailing. There's also a faux fill-flash feature called D-Lighting to brighten shadows.

Like the 8800, this Coolpix has an extraordinary ultra-high-speed burst mode, which can slice about 3 seconds of time into 100 wafer-thin segments at a 30fps clip. The resulting shots are distinctly low in resolution at 640x480 pixels but quite adequate for analyzing your kid's pitching motion or home-run swing. Low-speed burst shooting at full resolution produced 11 shots in just less than 11 seconds and 5 images in 1.8 seconds in 640x480-resolution high-speed burst mode.

Other performance figures ranged all over the map. Wake-up time to first shot was an average 4.8 seconds, and shot-to-shot times without flash were decent at 2.9 seconds but below par at 6.9 seconds when the flash was turned on. The Nikon Coolpix 8400 matched the 8800 in unimpressive shot-to-shot times for TIFF (21 seconds) and raw images (9.2 seconds). Shutter lag was better than average at 0.6 second under high-contrast lighting and just 1.1 seconds under more challenging low-contrast lighting conditions, thanks to the autofocus-assist LED.

At 792 shots, the Coolpix 8400's battery life proved better than the 8800's. That's likely because the 8400's less ambitious zoom range sipped less juice during our tests, which included 50 percent of the shots taken with flash and a thorough workout of zooming, picture review, and card formatting.

As with the 8800, we were less than thrilled with viewfinder performance. While the 1.8-inch, 134,000-pixel swiveling LCD worked well under most lighting conditions, we usually preferred the EVF's more detailed 235,000-pixel perspective. Both exhibited some ghosting when camera or subject moved and froze during autofocus or went completely blank during burst-mode sequences.

Though it was possible to get some good images, the overall photo quality could have been better. Manual white balance was excellent, and colors were very saturated without crossing the line to surreal. At the lowest sensitivity setting of ISO 50, noise was apparent but not terribly significant; however, it blossomed severely at ISO 100 and beyond. Purple fringing and some magenta chromatic aberration reared their ugly heads more frequently than we'd like, and as with virtually every digital camera, it was easy to blow out the highlights when exposing for the shadows.

However, the Nikon Coolpix 8400 did a good job of zapping red-eye. Because the built-in flash is located closer to the lens than on the 8800, shooting people with the red-eye reduction switched off almost guaranteed blazing orange pupils. With red-eye reduction activated, however, demon eyes were virtually eliminated under the same shooting conditions.