Nikon P5100

Reviewed November 2007

Test Photos

STILL LIFE PHOTO

This subject is photographed in a room that has a mix of fluorescent and incandescent light, but which is not brightly lit. The camera's flash is used to add fill light. The backdrop is 1.95 m (6.5 ft) from the camera.

The built-in flash of the Coolpix P5100 is powerful enough to light the subject while maintaining the sensitivity at the lowest setting of 64 ISO to keep noise to a minimum.

There is no detectable light falloff in the corners of the frame, indicating that the flash's coverage is well-suited to the zoom's focal length.

ZOOM PHOTO

Now we zoom in on a specific area. The intent is to test the sharpness of the image at the zoom's maximum setting. The camera remains at the same distance as with the preceding photo.

Zoomed in, the image sharpness improves noticeably when the image is seen at full size. A very reasonable level of detail can be seen, although it would seem that the relatively strong compression used may soften the image a touch.

Set to 640 ISO, the image the P5100 delivers is effectively noise-free with this subject.

The Macro mode of the P5100 allows the camera to focus on a subject that is just 4 cm (1.6 in.) from the front of the lens when the zoom is at the wide angle end. An icon representing the macro mode is shown in green on the monitor, as well as the effective zoom range, indicating that the zoom can be used partially to increase the apparent magnification, up to the equivalent of 47 mm.

At the minimum distance and the maximum magnification, the P5100 captures a field of view of 5 cm (1.95 in.) when measured horizontally in the frame.

BUILDING PHOTO

This image is our outdoor test. The architecture of the building, in particular the angled girders, immediately show the presence of jaggies. The shadowed entrance can also often reveal the quality of the exposure.

As noted above, at the wide angle end of its zoom, the Coolpix P5100 has a softer image than at any other point in its entire focal range. Moreover, this camera at least, yielded images at the wide end that were noticeably softer in the upper left part of the frame than the upper right, as can be seen in the sections cropped from the full size 12 megapixel image.

ZOOM PHOTO

Zooming in on the entrance of the building, the shadowed entrance takes on a greater importance for the metering and can cause an overexposure of sections that are directly lit.

With these photos of the building, the telephoto shots are also a bit soft, but it would seem that this is more the result of the image processing and compression along with the presence of some noise in the shadows than of the lens, since with most other subjects the sharpness of telephoto images was better than with these shots.

The telephoto end of the zoom does not appear to have any pincushion distortion, or a chromatic aberration.

NIGHT PHOTO

Since this camera offers a long exposure, a photo taken at night is included here.

Set to the Manual mode, the Coolpix P5100 is able to capture an exposure as long as 8 seconds. But, at 64 ISO, the camera's lowest sensitivity, the P5100 requires a relatively well-lit subject to be able to yield an interesting image.

The camera automatically applies noise reduction to all long exposures using a dark frame noise reduction system. The process seems to lessen the overall sharpness of the image, but is effective at eliminating most of the noise.

For this image, the white balance is set to Tungsten as it is the dominant light source, and is most likely to render colours more realistically than any other setting.

As always, when the camera is mounted on a tripod to capture a long exposure the optical image stabilizer must be turned off as it can cause an interference.