Cant get SHARPER than this!. Review on Nikon Coolpix 4300

I was a total stranger to the concept of photography and digital cameras, before I bought this amazing piece of technology! I was more used to the conventional film camera, which my dad held so possessively, as the Aussies holding on to their Cricket World Cup! My dad had a Minolta Camera with a Vivitar flash. It gave us some good pictures, but it was too freakin heavy! The whole apparatus weighed approximately 1.5 kilos!

Then came the digital revolution!! We finally decided to go in for a Digital camera. We were throughly confused with the brands and what each one had to offer us. My unanimous choice was Sony's Digital Cameras as I had seen one with my cousin, and I liked it a lot. I am a very tech - savvy person and I liked what I saw. But I changed my mind as soon as I saw this little beauty! What I have is a Nikon CoolPix 4100, a 4 MegaPixel Camera. I went through the product specifications and was simply overwhelmed with the features this thing had got. In simple terms, and trying not to sound too cliched, this thing is a powerpack of features.

Starting off, It has 15 scene selection modes, which provide for almost all possible 'photograph-able' situations. Second, the weight! This piece of equipment hardly weighs 150 grams! It was so light that when my dad first took it, he thought it was a dummy, or some other plastic model!! Its amaaaaaaazingly light...which is good when u are looking for better handling while photography... You dont wanna be ''weighed'' down right?! Thirdly, the entire handling and user interface. The camera has a very comfortable grip and snugly fits into the hand. The buttons are placed at the exact-proper locations. They are of the right size and shape. Believe me .. I know how ill placed and ill shaped buttons can get to one's nerves! The camera has a 1.6'' screen at the back side. The screen is very clear and shows us what we are shooting. To be more precise... WYSIWYG!!

Next comes the menu interface. The menus are very easy to navigate. Simple onscreen instructions and prompts help a lot! The camera has a feature to display info on the screen , or have a plain screen (without OSD), or simply turn off the monitor display at the back to save power. It also comes with its own COOLPIX NiMH Batteries which last for a decent amout of time. You can insert Alkaline batteries too! Another option is to use a AC-DC adapter to run your camera on a 'non-battery' mode. Finally, its time for the features! It has an optical zoom of 3x and a digital zoom of 10x. One must not confuse these numbers, as only the Optical Zoom matters while zooming in onto a subject.

Next, the photo quality. It delivers great pictures with amazing contrast, clarity and exposure. The photos are absolutely crispppppp!!! An option to change the color banlance as well as the exposure allow you to easily change settings as per requirements. It has manual as well as auto settings. 15 scene selection modes cater to every photograph-able situation! Sub modes like ''sport'' , ''terrain'' , etc allow us to shoot as per surroundings. A panorama assist allows us to take panoramic shots of a landscape or any other location. Other features include Best Shot Selection (BSS), in which the camera takes 16 consecutive shots in a very small amout of time and automatically determines the best and keeps it, while it ignores the other 15 shots! This is one amazing feature! Very useful! The macro mode allows us to take breathtaking close-ups of subjects.

The camera has an onboard memory of approximately 16 MB. It has a SD expansion memory slot. It connects to the computer via the common USB interface. Transferring images onto the computer is a breeze! The camera comes bundled with 3 CDs, One charger, 2 Coolpix NiMH batteries and a user manual. In the end, I would like to say that I an very glad I did not buy SONY, as my CoolPix overtakes SONY in every department! Truly... pictures are sharper than the sharpest!