Rating: 
Summary: One of the Best Camera in it;s League
Review: This is a very good camera. Bought it 6 months back. Took really great shots with this camera. From my point of view, you can buy any 4MP digital camera for this price, but what you have to watch out is that you get the best lenses. Nikon is the world leader in lenses - that is a fact ! Of course cannon can compare close. The features on the camera allow you to take excellent pictures.
One of the cons for this camera compared to the Nikon 4500 is that this camera does not have Aperature and Shutter priority modes. It has a manual mode in which you can choose your own aperture and shutter speeds. One other thing that this camera has a little problem with is a little sound in it's automatic mode, I think the lens adusts itself to the light or something, this is a little annoying in the begining, this sound is not audible in the programmed modes.
Rating: 
Summary: Nikon Camera Unreliable After Apparent Humidity/Water Damage
Review: Having been a professional photographer now for some 28 years and always seen Nikon as the Pinnacle of Camera Manufacturers, you can imagine my extreme disappointment when I recommended one Nikon Coolpix to my son. He and his girlfriend was on his way to Latin America for a once in a lifetime extended vacation and wanted a really good camera to catch them memories of that trip. I then had my son calling me on the phone to be advised that the Nikon Coolpix had packed up halfway through his trip, and worse still also finding out that the camera did not have any international warranty, despite that Nikon is a large and international company. I phoned Nikon to confirm the problems and decided to purchase him another Nikon Coolpix and send it to him and sort out the malfunctioning camera upon return. So upon his return to the Nikon camera was sent to Nikon Service Centre under warranty, only to be told that the camera had APPARENTLY suffered with humidity or water damage and was now uneconomic to repair. Quoting extracts from Nikon here they said: "Advised customer that repair has liquid damage." The water has caused the components to corrode, evident by the white fungus/mould. Called customer and offered exchange of a 4300 at £328 inc VAT" Being offered a replacement Nikon camera, but at a cost that turned out to be no kind favour at all, since it was far in excess of buying a new camera from a regular camera shop who sell the same item at a lot less, like £79 difference, no warranty cover for water or humidity damage according to Nikon, so not really much help there then! Quote Brand NIKON
Product Name COOLPIX 4300
Jessops Code NIKC4300
Jessops Price £249.90 The battery life on the Nikon Coolpix camera's that I have experienced, in some cases only giving 20 to 30 pictures, does not seem good and does not get better, it gets worse if anything as the batteries seem to fade away! I have now returned 3 Nikon Coolpix camera's to my local dealer and now intend to return two more soon also for credit against other more reliable camera's from another camera company that has not forgotten how to look after its customers? I my family and friends, on my recommendations, have now all switched to Canon Camera's. We have already purchased so far Three PowerShot Camera's a G2 and G3 both 4 Million Pixel camera's at very good prices (since both are now obsolete models), also a lovely newer current model the Canon Powershot G5 which is now increased to a very useful 5 Million Pixels. The design facilities, the quality and ease of use of all of these Canon PowerShot camera's seems to be much excellent, especially the newer CanonPowershot G5. The battery life is on CanonPowershot G5 is on another planet, by excellent by comparison to Nikon Coolpix camera that I have experienced! CanonPowerShot camera's are now on a regular basis taking over 500 pictures, some with the flash and that includes looking at them lots also on the screen often in disbelief at the high quality! The quality of photographs under all conditions has proven to be excellent. The movie sequences are also an amazing feature. The CanonPowershot cameras are slightly larger, than the but that makes it easier not to drop from my experience, which is what I would do with Nikon Coolpix camera's after my bad experiences! My next purchases of expensive professional digital camera kits will likely also be Canon EOS range camera's also, perhaps not surprisingly!
Rating:
Summary: Can't go wrong.
Review: I needed a new camera. I wanted something in the "prosumer" area. So, I ended up buying this camera. I see people complained about the speed of writing to the compact flash media. This is also dependent on the actual CF card. I've used Lexar "high-speed" CF media, SanDisk CF media, etc... The write times are fine from my experience. This camera will also let you take pictures in the TIFF file format, now these files are big because they are uncompressed, so yes, if you are shooting in TIFF you will wait a while for the images to be written to disk. The preset scene modes are great, because you can simply choose one such as "landscape" without knowing any of the technical details for that setting. For those you want more control, you can have more control. I tried printing images taken with this camera on 13x19 paper, and the result is breathtaking. The camera's form-factor is interesting. It is very small, but the user interface in my opinion is flawless. The batteries seem to last about one hour on a full charge, so I would get a couple more batteries to be on the safe side while shooting for long periods of time. So, if you want a digital camera that provides a lot of features for a decent price, check this out out.
Rating: 
Summary: It's a great little camera - just don't use 256Mb cards
Review: I've had the 4300 for just a little over a year and have taken about 3000 photos since. I have 2 CF cards that I use, and I prefer the 64Mb card over the 256Mb one. This is the only complain that I have; that the 256Mb card takes forever to write the images. But when I used the 64Mb card, it works great. What I do is that I use the 256Mb for movies and the other for still photos. All the features of this camera is outstanding. I love the 12 preset features.
Rating:
Summary: Great little camera
Review: I "traded up" my Nikon 885 of two years for this one recently and I have not been disappointed. I particularly like the Best Shot Selector feature, which has rescued a great shot for me on many occasions. I do a lot of enlargements, cropping, etc., and the resolution is amazing even at 11x17. I've experienced the same problems with the 4300 (as well as the 885) that others have noted - lag time, lens cap, power consumption, redeye, etc. - but most are petty inconveniences rather than major problems. My advice to prospective buyers for this or any other upper midrange digital camera is: prepare to *study the manual* because it will only improve your comfort-level with the camera, not to mention the quality of your photos. The "point-and-shoot" label is misleading - it's very user-friendly, but it's also a complex piece of electronics that performs even better if you know how you use it properly. I've taken thousands of photos around New York City over the past year with this camera, and I've gotten a lot of enjoyment and satisfaction out of it. Invest in an extra battery pack, a high-end memory card, and go have some fun!
Rating:
Summary: Good value for money
Review: I have held off from buying a digital camera for the longest time, since I was a hard-core SLR manual photography kind of person having had two conventional Nikons (FE and FE2) and three lenses which I use to this day. The wife needed a point-and-click camera and I decided that digital would be the best alternative (since I wouldn't have to go to the trouble of sending out rolls of film for developing) and she could handle most of the stuff herself. After quite a bit of researching (cost, review of specs, users' comments on quality) I decided to pick up the Coolpix 4300. Got it for $359 at buydig.com in the summer of 2003. While the comments of some folks on speed of saves is valid (wasn't an issue for me), this is easily overcome by using faster memory cards. I have found focusing to be precise and sharp, colours very vibrant (true to Nikon tradition). As some people mention, yes using the flash indoors at distances greater than 8 feet does cause some agony, but I am currently looking for a slave flash unit to overcome that. Also, since I figured out how to set exposures manually, I have been drawn towards using the machine more frequently. Of course, do not assume that higher aperture numbers automatically produce greater depth-of-field. This digital camera applies a filter (as opposed to an actual aperture) to achieve the value of the aperture setting, and hence the lack of change in depth-of-field. Deletes have been reasonably fast at under 20 seconds for a high quality JPEG image at the highest resolution available (which is 2272 or so). That is fine by me as well, since I do my deletes later (and not while actually taking pictures). I have two 256 MB and one 512MB CF cards and the smaller of those cards stores about 120 images at the resolution I talked of. The autoexposure modes are good for what they are designed to do, but all the scenes they have predefined don't always work for me. Hence the need to turn to the manual mode. Having said that, the wife gets very good pictures in the kids' school auditorium, in the school playground and in the classrooms using the predefined scenes. So I really see no reason to complain. As for the editing software, it is reasonable, but I couldn't care less. I don't edit my pictures. In the odd chance that I do want to, I use GIMP (free Photoshop workalike available at http://www.gimp.org). While GIMP may not have all features of the most recent versions of Photoshop, it still does a reasonably good job for its price of zero.
Rating: 
Summary: Blurry Photos
Review: Everthing is great but when u turn off the flash the photos become very blurry. With flash their great, without the flash the photos are crap!! DON'T BUY THIS CAMERA. I bought it and thinking about returning it. Justin
Rating:
Summary: Initial impressions
Review: I got a chance to play with this camera today. The picture quality seems up to Nikon's typical quality. The only thing that really lept out at me, however, was how slow the camera was. Browsing through pictures can take up to 8 seconds a pop. Deleting a picture takes, literally, minutes. I've never used such an outrageously slow digital camera in my life. It seems others have also had this problem. In addition, the lens cap is a pain, and the lens smashes into it if you forget to remove it--not good. Nikon's mid-range seems to be lacking in the digital world, but their high-end stuff cannot be beat. There are better cameras than this one in the point-and-shoot segment.
Rating:
Summary: System Error Crashes Unit Unless You Know What You are Doing
Review: The Coolpix functioned well until about 10 months into ownership, when the lens mechanism failed and the display shows only a "System Error" message. I suspect that because the unit designs to force the lens against the lens cap, some damage occurs through frequent use if you fail to remove the lens cap before turning the camera on. This is a definite design defect. Although I loved the camera for 10 months, and frequently used it instead of my Canon EOS 10D, this design defect basically sinks this unit as defective from the get-go. Avoid. However, in this edit of my review, I was able to fix the problem later by continuing to cycle the camera through a lens opening and closing and by forcing the retraction of the lense. (I know it is hard to explain.) Finally, the software matched the machinery and the system error vanished. What a hassle, but it saved sending the camera back.
Rating:
Summary: Great point-and-shoot camera, best for outdoors
Review: I bought this camera and took it on a trip to British Columbia the next day. We took pictures for a week, and when we returned, were blown away by how good the pictures turned out. Fantastic color, easy to use, even good night shots. Later I've used the camera more indoors and there I do see some weaknesses -- I have not been able to get flash shots that measure up to the outdoor shots.
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