After spending the last couple of years listening
to people say that digital cameras would soon be "good
enough", my resistance to buying into digital was pushed
over the edge when I saw a an excellent promotional deal on
the CP950 and so for a price approximately 40% of the original
list price, the Coolpix was acquired in March 2001. It is worth
remembering that with most things to do with computers and or
digital equipment, buying a generation or two out of date is
always the most cost effective way. It also saves you playing
the role of guinea pig for the manufacturers, while they develop
their state of the art new products.
To say that this camera is "good enough" however is
a massive understatement, it has proved to be, in a word, BRILLIANT.
It is a 2.1 mega pixel digital camera and comes
as standard with an 8MB compact flash card to store images on.
This is soon found to be a massive weakness, you need at least
64MB of on board storage to go out for a day with this camera.
This is not a particular fault of the CP950, as all current
digital cameras are supplied with a very low capacity storage
cards as standard. It is simply one more expense which has to
be included in the equation when costing a new digital camera.
At the time of writing compact flash is available for approximately
£1 per MB.
Likewise an other weakness common to all digital
cameras is their thirst for battery power, the CP950 runs on
four rechargeable AA's, and you will need at least two sets
of these to keep you going for the day. I currently carry five
or six fully charged sets around at all times. (A somewhat different
situation to changing the battery in my Minox every 3 or 4 years!)
I have invested in a Lexar 64MB compact flash
card and this allows me to record approximately 70 images when
using the camera in it's "Fine" mode. This is not
the absolute top quality setting available but is the top quality
setting employing "jpeg" compression. The "Top"
setting is "Hi" and this stores images in the uncompressed
"TIFF" format. This setting requires around 6MB per
image. The "Fine" jpeg setting has proved to be the
best option and provides images of a quality that will withstand
re-sizing in Photoshop to A3 print size.
