Customer Reviews

Nikon Coolpix 7900 7 MP Digital Camera with 3x Optical Zoom

5 star:		(29)
4 star:		(18)
3 star:		(4)
2 star:		(1)
1 star:		(4)

 

 

I bought the Nikon Coolpix 7900 for my wife and daughter. We couldn't be happier about it.

I have a Minolta Dimage A2 which is larger, heavier and more expensive and has a lot of manual adjustment capability. A small part of my almost regrets lugging the A2 around because the Nikon is so small and light and performs so well.

It has been perfect so far for any sort of snapshot we've used it for. If exclusively taking snapshots was all I did, I would definitely replace my A2 with one of these. I'm keeping and continuing to use the A2 because of hobby non-snapshot photography, but will be borrowing the Nikon from my wife and daughter for anytime I need a quick, easy camera for snapshots on the go.

One note: We had a Nikon Coolpix 3200 which we enjoyed very much. The 7900 is a nice upgrade from that. The only disappointing change for us from the 3200 to the 7900 is that the 3200 uses AA batteries while the 7900 requires a special rechargable battery. It lasts long, so no complaints there - but it was always nice with the 3200 to be able to grab two AAs on the road rather than recharging.

I have years of photography experience and teach a digital photography continuing ed. class in our local junior college. I've used the Sony DSC-P9 camera for the last few years. I was looking at the P100 or 200 as an upgrade option.

The shape and style of the camera and its price first caught my eye. I compared it to a very similar camera that was $200 higher but with limited extra features. I chose this one.

After reading these reviews about the complaints over focus in low light I became concerned and started shooting around my house (with regular 40watt ceiling fan lights). The results are as expected - the camera did fine. The major problem when shooting in low light is certainly shutter speed. You'll never be able to hold a camera still enough for 15th of a second shots. (30th of a second only if the subject and you are still) The camera obviously gives priority in several of its scene settings to image density, sacrificing shutter speed for capturing enough light to give an adequate shot in very poor lighting conditions.

With searching through the options and choosing the right assisting modes (Manual focus spot selection, Auto Bracketing, etc.) and with 'Best Shot Selector' the photographer is given the ability to hold down the shutter and the camera assists you by obtaining the most still shot!

But as always - if you MUST take pictures in dim lighting, use a tripod!! If you want absolute great clarity, you need an SLR camera with larger lens elements (more glass) to capture more light and focus specifically like you want to MANUALLY. (more money)

This camera offers a great trade-off and improves on previous generations' flaws by speeding up flash charging, offering rapid exposure's (1.7 per second) and many assisting modes that take a little learning curve to adapt to your shooting style, but in the end - a really good value! I'll keep mine.

After using a Nikon N75 for 2 years and being extremely pleased with it I decided I needed something a little smaller for play/work to pack around with me
First impressions of the camera are very good, it fits my hands quite nicely, which is often an issue because most digicams dont fit my hands very well.
The 2" screen is very nice and smooth when panning around a scene and works well in direct sunlight, I can actually see it (compared to a Canon A80 which i cant see anything in the sun)
The camera starts up very quickly (after diabling the animation) so that is nice for being able to snap pics. The camera is ready to go before you get it up to your eye after turning it on.
The low light focus is a little poor, but for the other options that the camera has I'm willing to overlook it
This camera has no chromatic aberation in high contrast screens, so there is absolutely no blue fringing in any of the pictures. This was a big selling feature for me as the blue fringing that the Canon A80 & A95 had were completely unacceptable to me. Especially after using a real SLR camera.

I find the autofocus quite quick under normal conditions, and it works quite well. The zoom is smooth and has a number of incremements that you can zoom by, not like some other cameras that seem to have a preset number of zooms, this one you can just bump the button and it will just zoom a wee little bit!

I know some people are complaining about the camera taking a long time to write pics, this is because they have the in camera red eye fix turned on, and then the camera has to analyze the image to fix the red eye. Simply turn the red eye fix off and it writes the images nice and quick.

As for the people that say that it wont take a image in focus, I'm not sure what your talking about, I've taken lots of pics with it, and it either tells me with a "vibration warning" that it needs more light (flash) or that the picture is blurred and asks you if you want to save it or delete it.

The scene assist modes are quite nice such as the panorama assist mode, it leaves a phantom image on 1/2of the screen so you can line up the next shot so that they line up easily and stich together well.
There is an option for landscape shots, and an option to divide the screen into 9 parts so you can fram you shots properly, and thats just scratching the surface......!

One other note, I bought a Sandisk Ultra II 1GB Secure Digital card, and I tested it against a regular Lexar SD card that we have at work and the Sandisk Ultra II is more than 2X faster on writing to memory. I would highly recommend it.

Overall I am quite happy with the camera as a secondary camera. If you were looking for a camera for primary use in all situations, you may be dissapointed with the low light focus, but I haven't had many issues with it yet

I am a life-long Nikon user; this is my third camera in 18 years. Never bought or used anything quite as good. We bought a Nuvis S (APS) five years ago because at that point the quality of digital cameras was really poor. Decided to take the leap into digital photography with the Coolpix 7900. After reading a lot of the reviews of this and other cameras, I find these misleading. A lot of them should be categorized by type of user: professional, hobbyist, casual user, etc. which would qualify a lot of these range of opinions. My wife and I like to have the camera around to take pictures of our kids and of places we go and I enjoy taking interesting shots or portraits. My wife wanted a camera that could at least take short movies since I am not one of those dads to have his hand stuck on the digicam for every occasion. We wanted good quality digital pics and our budget was between $300-$400 and and we wanted to make sure this camera was compatible with our Mac (iMac G5) and our iPod Photo.
Why the Coolpix 7900?
#1 BRAND, brand, brand. I was not happy with the Nikon Nuvis S and was ready to abandon the Nikon ship until one day I was chatting up a photographer who told me how the technology of APS film works and why it is so grainy. So, I looked at other friend's APS and the quality was worse than with my Nuvis S. So, it wasn't so much the Nikon but rather the film type. APS cannot match up to 35mm. Anyway, after checking out Canon and Konica/Minolta, I didn't get the impression from the description that they were offering a superior product to Nikon. Why does Nikon have a good reputation? Nikon is first and foremost a company that manufactures professional cameras. Simply put, the technology developed for these top shelf models makes its way down to models that average consumers can get their hands on at affordable prices. They are still a bit more expensive than other brands, but marginally so now. Considering what you get for your money, you actually get what you pay for. Not a sleek plastic box with average technology, like the popular Canon models.
#2 PRICE POINT: We got this camera for $335, which retails for $400. The price point for the next superior model, the Coolpix 8700 (the top of the line Coolpix 8800 is $800) was @ $650. The only difference between this and the 7900 is 8x megapixels, rather than 7x megapixels found in the 7900. Since we are amateurs, it didn't make a whole lot of sense to spend that amount of clams. I paid around the same for the other two Nikon I have bought in the past 18 years.
#3 MEGAPIXELS: this is what you need to know about digital photography. The higher the megapixels, the clearer the picture. 7x megapixels is available at reasonable prices this year. Just two years ago, our friends bought a Nikon 5900 with 5x megapixels for $500. Don't buy anything less, you'll be disappointed. We took a few pics and then uploaded them to iPhoto on the iMac G5 and in a word... WOW! Amazing; quality you see in printed books! Every time I upload pics to the computer and use them as wallpaper they exceed the quality of the photgraphs that came standard on the Mac and I am amazed.
#4 QUALITY AND RANGE OF OPTIONS: Again, Nikon is the leader in bringing a lot of bells and whistles first to the consumer market. Each of the features listed by Nikon under the product description actually work and are functional, though I probably will never use the direct printing feature. I was a little overwhelmed by the range of options at first but you'll learn them by just playing around with the camera, this is half the fun! Very easy to use and well-laid out on the camera. In your hand, the camera feels small but solid yet not cheap. It is very compact, too; I thought it would be bigger from the pictures. It is the size of a family size bar of soap. Very ease to tuck in places but not too small where you'd lose it.
#5 FEATURES: Other reviews complain about poor-quality photos in low-light situations. As an owner of this camera, I, too, have had this problem but once I learned that you have to go to SCENE mode and choose either Backlight or Indoor to correct lighting deficiences then-- problem solved. You cannot shoot low-light photos in MACRO mode. Duh. I did a test photograph between these two modes and the Backlight feature was incredible. The differences between these two photographs were amazing. I think these reviews are from users who haven't learned how to use the camera. Other complaints are of Close-ups. Again, you have to enable micro-close-up (from the main menu) so the camera knows to enhance the image while shooting in MACRO mode. Otherwise, just blurry. I have been shooting food in close-ups and they are so clar you can almost taste them. That clear. The short movies are great and the sound quality is excellent. They have exceeded my expectations. They must be transferred from iPhoto to iMovie and then they are automatically played on QuickTime software. Very easy. We also hooked up the camera to the TV for a slide show, the cable was included. Very fun to show family and friends or to a group.
Things you need to know before BUYING/USING camera:
-You must buy a memory card if you want to use this with some regularity outside of the house, away from the computer. The internal memory is very little. Thus, as with ANY digital camera, you have to figure in another $25-$50 for a decent-size memory card. We bought a 512 for @ $45 and it had 80 pics on it and two movies when it ran out while we were away for a few days. I erased some unwanted pics (you'll find you'll be taking several pictures of everything so get in the habit of clearing all but the best pics before you upload them to the computer, to save space both on the camera and the hard drive) and I kept taking photos. Not really a problem. Just remember to upload and erase original photos from the camera before heading away from home.
-Install software before uploading photos. iPhoto randomly fails to upload certain movies. We called Nikon and the problem wass fixed when we installed the software. The pics/movies upload to Nikon's "Picture Project" and then we just transfer them over to iPhoto. Easy and not time-consuming.
Overall, money well-spent and EXTREMELY satisfied with this purchase. We highly recommend this to people who have the same needs as us: user-friendly, point-and-shoot, amateur hobbyists who wanted a movie feature and not super savvy with technology or fussy about photographic details and fit in with our iMac and iPod Photo technology.

I currently use three digital cameras: a Nikon 7900, a Canon S1 IS and a Canon Digital Rebel XT. I take about 5,000 photos a year and have been using exclusively digital cameras since 1999.

The number of pictures taken per camera is inversely proportional to the camera size, mainly because big cameras are a pain to lug around. I purchased the Nikon 7900 to have a unit that I could wear on my belt (be sure to get the Nikon case with its extra battery compartment). Whether I'm walking or bike riding, the 7900 is easy to take along and less likely to get left lying on stump or café seat because it's attached to my belt like a cell phone.

The Nikon 7900 takes great pictures. If any shots have been blurry, the problem has been my error -- either motion or choosing the wrong scene mode. A word of caution about the leather case: it fits like a glove but also is likely to cause the mode dial to turn when you insert or remove the camera from the case. You need to check the dial setting frequently.

The best way to prevent motion blur (outside of using a camera like the Canon S1 IS with image stabilization gyros) is to take photos using the eyepiece-optical viewfinder rather than the LCD monitor on the back. When you look through the eyepiece, at least one hand is braced against your head. Most people have enough balance and nervous control to hold their heads fairly still. Not so for your hands and arms holding a camera away from you so you can see the LCD monitor. Use the LCD for changing camera settings and reviewing shots, not for composing and shooting pictures. In this regard, the Nikon 7900 eyepiece is no prize. It typically shows only about two-thirds of a scene and displays no camera settings.

I like the Nikon 7900's clean design. With my Canon cameras, it's not uncommon to accidentally change a setting by touching one of the many buttons on the back. That's less likely to occur with the Nikon. The Nikon's scene modes are helpful once you take the time to read the user manual. Creating 7 megapixel images is overkill unless you really expect to publish a photo, and such large files bog down transfer and processing on the PC. Transferring images via the USB cable works smoothly, but the camera connector is smaller than other mini-USBs (like the ones on iPods, Rio music players or my other cameras).

My favorite camera of three I own is the Canon S1 IS, but I am pleased with the Nikon 7900 purchase. It fills the niche for a small camera.

The 7900 sure is an attractive little camera with it's sleek body and high mega pixel count. Like several other Coolpix cameras, including the Nikon 8800, this camera can't focus well in low light. I don't know why Nikon continues to release these cameras with the same flaws. The AF system on the Coolpix line is contrast based and in less than ideal lighting it can lock focus, but get wrong repeatedly. You can visit DPreview.com and Nikonians.com for more info on AF weaknesses with the Coolpix line.
This is a serious warning for buyers! Website forums for Nikon are filled with rabid supporters of the products, even when they haven't tried them. Another funny move is when the focus problems are mentioned by someone they quickly post a shot taken on the dark side of the moon! What exactly does this prove? The 7900 CAN take a low light shot, but it will often miss the shot as well. Don't trust samples taken in low light since you have no idea how many missed shots it took to get it. Buyer's remorse makes camera owners say and do anything to defend their purchases.
Point blank: The 7900 has poor auto focusing compared to MANY other cameras. To make matters worse it has a VERY weak AF assist light just like the 8800. Insult to injury. A Pentax Optio S5i focuses better in low light without the lamp and costs far less. A Canon A95 also has superior focus ability, though not the best of it's class. High count sensors mean little when you miss a shot due to focus, right?
When the 7900 DID get the focus right, images seemed slightly soft overall. While it has many modes there's no real manual control of the camera. This is not good for the growing photographer or the shooter who likes to fine tune.
There's little point in discussing the Nikon's other merits. Inability to focus in many indoor settings is a deal killer. Like the 8800, I have no idea why Nikon can't do what other designers have done at half the cost. I own a Nikon D70 DSLR and I LOVE IT, so I'm not bashing Nikon. I just don't know what the problem is with their line of P&S units. The 7900 I tested belongs to a friend and she's returning it for a Canon A95 or Fuji 550.

I have had nothing but great results with this camera. Make sure to read the manual and reviews to help you adjust for best picture quality. People have been complaining about the poor AF lamp again I've have great results, I'm not sure what is causing thier poor results. I compared this to the Canon SD500 which is also a great camera, I ultimatly like the pictures out of the Nikon better. The thing that sold me was no purple fringing around objects with the Nikon. I would encourage people to try both, the coolpix 5900 is a great 5MP version of this camera.

This tiny camera has it all! It is far easier than my old HP Photosmart 3.2 and my Canon 2.0 with easy to learn features. It has it all, including `fireworks' mode! The best are the various `tones' you can give your pictures. Just look at all the technical specifications here and you'll be amazed! I like that I can video in three different modes with great sound and that I can film in so many different modes (headshot, distance, fireworks, nightscape, backlight, etc.) that you can never screw up. Plus it is 7.0 pixels which is really incredible even when you crop half a photo! Unlike most small cameras, the buttons are easy to navigate. It also comes with all the extras you need (listed in the specifications). Don't settle for anything less than 7.0 pixels, as within a year anything 5.0 or under will be obsolete. I love this little thing and bought all the accessories it didn't come with (which were few).

For the first two days, I seriously wanted to return this camera. I had an older Canon Powershot A310 that half of the time took reasonable pictures at low-level light, and was used to not working with the flash. I still had my old camera when I was first trying this one out, and took about one hundred shots with each camera in the exact same setting. The low-light pictures almost always turned out bad/unacceptable. If you want more casual, less obstructive photography during family events or dinner or things like that (I hate interrupting things with the flash!), this camera might not be for you. On the other hand, I found that the best pictures I took with the old camera were with the flash. I thought I would hate the Nikon, at first. But then I got to get to know it a little better...
The refresh rate on the screen is very high, and the screen takes up much of the back of the camera. I am very pleased with the screen overall. The buttons, which take a bit of messing around to get to know, are moderately user-friendly, as is the menu in most cases. One thing I don't like is the lack of manual focus- there is a way you can choose what the camera focuses on, but it involves the camera auto-focusing on a particular spot that you can designate- you don't really have control like you would on an SLR, which eats at my soul.
The macro setting is my favorite. This camera has a very good macro lens, although it does have some trouble focusing when the object is less than an inch away. I found myself getting the camera focused using my hand, then locking the focus (by pressing down halfway on the main button), and then moving in close the the desired object. Macro works great under most conditions. I sometimes have to prop it up on something, or use a tripod, or hold REALLY still for it to take good pictures. I took this camera with me on a vacation in Oregon and took about 1500 pics; I had, of course, some bad ones, but many many of the pictures I took were very good, and I even have some printed.
The flash! The camera works wonders with its flash. Just to see how well it would work, I began spinning the camera around in circles, and letting the camera focus and take a picture by itself, not watching. Most of the time, indoors, the flash let the camera focus very well, and only rarely (when I really spun it fast) did the picture turn out blurred.
The casing is great, the camera is small, and fits in pockets (mine), although the extra SD cards and batteries basically require a small camera holder, with zipping pockets. I love the look of it, and it feels solid.
The scene assist modes, accessible by a spin dial, are very helpful, although I found myself mostly using the "automatic everything" setting, and the macro setting. The portrait ones are useful, as is the landscape, but I found satisfactory results with the regular mode. The movie mode is good, nothing very special; I recorded some very memorable things with it, and am glad it comes with the camera, though it's not a highlight.
3x Zoom is about standard; personally, I would like more, but the 7.1 megapixels makes up for that slightly (big pictures can be zoomed in a bit, and still retain their good appearance).
The seven megapixels ROCKS MY SOCKS completely. I absolutely love them, all 7,100,000 of them. Massive pictures can be cropped (for instance, I took a pic of a whole plant, then cropped it into a great looking single-flower-shot, and printed it). Can't say enough how much I love the megaMegapixelage of this camera. BUT!!! BE SURE TO BUY AT LEAST A 512mb SD disk!!!!! Mine didn't come with a card, which didn't mean anything to me- most cards that ship with cameras can only take a few pics at the highest resolution, lowest compression. I have three 512s and a 1gig card.
Overall, I am very pleased with this camera, although there are definitely a few things that I don't like: bad low-light focusing without the flash, focusing problems on REALLY close objects in macro mode, and the extendible lens. If you think you would like to take many pictures indoors, or away from bright light, then I would consider getting a different camera. I would definitely buy this again; I consider it one of the best purchases I have made. I just wish Nikon would get its autofocusing gears into action, and give me low-light non-flash capabilities!

I had this camera for 14 days. I went to the store to buy the Canon SD500, and the design of the Nikon Coolpix 7900 grabbed my attention. The sales person informed me that the only difference between the Nikon and the Canon was the name.

She was wrong.

In a series of 100 photos, the Nikon took around 6 crystal clear shots. The remaining 94 shots were blurry and lacked quality.I upgraded my Olympus C3040 (3MP) with the Coolpix 7900. My Olympus outperformed the Coolpix in all respects, except for battery type, weight, and size of camera.

When I returned the camera to the place of purchase they asked if I was sure I was "doing it right." I am an artist and published photographer. I've been taking pictures with digital camera for 5 years. I carefully read the instructions, I even called Nikon to ask for assistance.

This camera cannot take QUALITY photographs consistently. Especially in low light. Bottom-line--I found it to be a horrible camera. A typical case of what glitters is not always gold.

I returned the camera for the Canon Powershot SD500 and my first three photos were pristine.

Good luck,
JAS