Customer Reviews

Nikon Coolpix L6 6MP Digital Camera with 3x Optical Zoom

5 star:		(10)
4 star:		(9)
3 star:		(4)
2 star:		(6)
1 star:		(2)

 

 

Nikon L6: A compact Versatile Camera.

I have taken 200 pics and 12 videos in one week. A friendly camera, learning and opinion as follows:-

1. Colors: True and natural. Just captures the real colors. This is the best quality. You capture what you see.
2. Buttons and Functions: Simple, heuristic, no need to do a serious reading of the book.
3. Settings: The options are varied, good. Liked the video capture options very much i.e. for options for computer size image, TV size image and TV* image size. Videos on projection up to 5ftX 4 ft look good. For video presentations, Audio capture: has noise while play back on the camera. The noise is much lower when played on computer or projector. A steady background hiss. Mostly, because microphone faces forward, hence the commentary spoken from behind has poor noise to signal ratio. But it is fine.
4. Still Snaps; Good. A 3 MP size image is about 400 KB. Used for presentations. Lower resolution is also available. At high end, 6 MB it is perfect.
5. Body: Sturdy, compact. Impressive and austere, no unnecessary contours, labels, very somber looking.
6. LCD: 2.5 inch, in bright sun, the image is not visible, this is understandable.
7. No standard optical view finder. The LCD and Camera hibernates very quickly after 15 to 20 secs non use. Great on battery
8. Battery: 2 AAs cells. Great. This means one can use the camera right out of the box, no need to carry charger, no need to buy additional battery lithium for 40 to 50 $, when run out, just pop in fresh two AAs. Rechargeable AAs of 2700 mA are very good indeed. Carry 2 spare in office bag.
9. Video Zoom. All new digital compacts either do not have zoom whilst recording or the zoom jumps in multiples of 1x. This is jumpy. I miss the smooth step-less 4x optical to 4 x digital continuous 16x smooth zoom of my Kodak 4 MP. I tested: mostly all new compacts now have a zoom in video capture that goes boom boom 1x 2x 3x ....Can not fault Nikon for this.
10. What did I want? I wanted a compact traveling, high quality work camera, always in my laptop case, which is also great for the family/home pictures. I got that in Nikon L6.

Pros:
-----
1- Small and compact, yet not too small to be uncomfortable to hold. (Cameras are going back to being slightly bigger than credit cards to lower the effect of shaky hand and blurry images.

2- Uses AA batteries. Great lifespan with 2100mah NIMH rechargeable.

3- Picture quality especially in well lit surroundings is truly impressive. darker areas are not too bad either.

4- Movie clips upto 1GB in size is quite nice. This translates into about 18mins of recording on the highest setting.

5- Auto shut-off is relatively fast which avoids wasting battery life.

6- has a blur warning, to let u know if u have taken a picture which will be too blurry for printing. Does this immediately after taking the picture, so u can take a second one.

Cons:-
-------

1- Flash is a bit week. Pix taken in very dark places (bar, club,..etc) are a bit grainy, but nothing too excessive however.

2- There is no setting to review the pix taken without having the lens extend on power-up, or when connecting camera to a pc to download images. In other words the lens is always protruding from the camera when it powered up. This shortens the mechanisms life and makes the camera somewhat harder to pass on to other to see pictures. and can be damaged easily.

3- Cannot zoom movie clips when recording has started ( this is the case with most cameras these days).

4- Flash takes too long to recharge between pictures.

5- Becuase of the flash recharge delay, u are not able to review pictures already taken, until the flash has finished re-charging for the next picture.

I wanted to try and cover issues that other reviewers may not point out. I have to say however, except for "Con #5", the other issues aren't major to me. Overall I like the camera and don't regret buying it.

i bought this camera based on an older 3mp version a friend of mine has that i liked. the older model is far superior. this camera is slow to focus, slow to shoot, and slow to save. i took 5 pictures in a row of the same thing in the same lighting condition (indoor, medium light) on the automatic setting, all 5 pictures turned out different, only one turned out clear. i returned it the next day and bought a cannon that i am very happy with.

I bought it for my wife's Christmas present. I compared pictures with ones I took from my CANON A70, which is out of market now. The sharpness is good. No doubt about both Nikon and Canon are good lens makers. But speed of focus and shutter is slow. Too much noise when shots taken under low light. I am doubting Nikon is not good in eletronical industry. If the price is your concern, Nikon Coolpix L6 is a choice. Otherwise, I would recommend CANON any models as a better pick.

Disappointing. This is my 4th digital camera and I thought this was an upgrade. At 6 megapixels, I expected sharp, crisp photos, but they are not. Writing to the card after each shot is very slow. Look for something else.

Camera gets 3 stars, but Nikon customer service gets 5.

Camera has a tendency to turn itself on when in the case. The lens kept trying to open against resistance and eventually failed. I think it was because holding down the Play button, which is prominent on the back side, turns the camera on and needlessly opens the lens. So forget about slipping it into a pocket or backpack or anything else you'd like to be able to do with a compact.

However, even though I didn't have the receipt, Nikon repaired it quickly and free of charge. I mailed it to them on a Friday, and had it back 10 days later, 4 of which were weekends, and 4 of which were in transit. I was pleased.

EDIT: I'm an idiot and left my Nikon on the roof of my car. After reading reviews and trying numerous cameras in the $100-200 range, I settled on the L12 as a replacement.

I had two major problems with the L6: it's tendency to turn on in the case, and the very slow acquisition speed (the time I had to hold down the button before the picture was actually captured). Both are greatly improved in the L12. The play button is recessed, and even when it is held down the camera turns on in preview mode but without opening the lens. The acquisition time is also better, but I can't quantify it exactly yet. Maybe half.

This is my second digital camera; I've been using most recently a Nikon 35mm and though it probably isn't fair to make comparisons, I do find this little digital to be every bit as responsive and easy to use as the 35mm. I haven't noticed any lack of speed in shooting, etc. Maybe that's because this camera is used mostly for pleasure rather than business, so I can take a more relaxed attitude. I think for the price and all the options it does offer, the L6 is a fine choice and I would not hesitate to recommend it. I'm merely a hobbyist when it comes to photography, and again, maybe that's why my attitude is more relaxed. I don't demand anything much other than a good final product, and my new L6 delivers that!

There's lots to like about this camera. Perhaps #1 is the extremely long battery life of up to l,000 photos on 2 AA Lithium batteries (approx. $5.50 replacement cost), with an indicator right in the LED viewer for how many shots left on the batteries. It has a strong metal case and is very compact. It offers fully automatic photo setting, or flip it to the scene mode for all your manual adjustments. The picture quality is good.

This is an excellent little tool for mobile videoblogging and video podcasting. The video image is one of the best I've seen from a point-and-shoot camera and the audio's not half bad, either. It's small enough to fit in your pocket, has long battery life and nice color. Can't beat it for the price!

My girlfriend and I just went on a road trip and used the camera for our day videos (watch them at thepovertyjetset.blip.tv). I was more than thrilled with it's performance.

Just a few notes from using this camera after having owned an HP, Olympus, and Sony digital camera.

1. The Nikon has no manual focus mode but the autofocus is not bad. If you do a lot of low light work, a camera with an infrared focus beam like the Sony is better. With the the infrared beam, the camera can focus in total darkness.

2. The manual only mentions SD memory cards to 1 GB but a store let me try a 2 GB, X60 card and it worked almost doubling the number of photos and increasing the movie record time to about 30 minutes in the highest quality, 640x480 resolution, 30 frames/sec mode. My camera has firmware version 1.0 so it is likely all L6's can use a larger memory. One person has reported it will take a 4 GB memory ( not the SDHC type but plain SD ). I cannot verify that however.

3. Some reviewers here have noted slow writing times to memory but remember that speed depends not only on the camera but the speed of the memory. Most SD cards with no speed indicator write at about 1.5 MB/sec. The high speed cards mentioned in the manual are X66 ( means 66 times 150KB/sec ) which achieve write speeds of 10 MB/sec.

4. The L6 can zoom during movie mode but the zoom is digital not optical. Also, you can hear the focusing mechanism noise on the soundtrack in movie mode.

5. Having had batteries go dead at the most inopportune times, a camera that uses common AA's is a plus.

6. The L6 only has one metering mode unlike some cameras that can switch between spot and center weighted average. The many scene modes make up for this but one caveat. The blur warning available in non-scene mode does not work in scene mode.

7. Macro Mode was a pleasant surprise. Both my Sony and the Nikon focus to about the same distance in macro mode but there is a big difference in the results. The Sony achieves the close distance in wide angle mode. At maximum zoom, the Sony requires moving the camera back from the object. The Nikon is the opposite. It requires moving back ( not as much as the Sony ) at wide angle and it meets its close focusing distance specification at maximum optical zoom.

8. The battery compartment. The L6 has a locking latch on the battery compartment door and the door opens by being pulled out towards the front of the camera. It may not seem like much unless you have owned an Olympus which had a battery compartment door on the bottom with no latch and that opened by sliding along the long dimension of the camera. Many times I would reach in my pocket to find the door open and the batteries having fallen out of the camera.

9. A 25 minute video took about 25 minutes to transfer into the computer so the USB bus implementation must be USB1.1 or USB2 full speed ( 12 Mb/s ) instead of high speed ( 480 Mb/s ).