Nikon Coolpix 5400 Digital Camera

EXCELLENT

By Yahoo! Shopping User  Aug 10, 2003 | 14 out of 14 found this Nikon Coolpix 5400 review helpful

This is my first digital camera, and it has blown me away. Right out of the box I was taking and printing awesome photos. Granted, I will probably never use the 5400 to its max capabilities, but I found it to be very user friendly for a newbie to di...gital cameras. The macro shots I have taken have been nothing short of of fantastic. Any flash photos you take, will require the add on flash attachment, as the one incorparted within the camera just does not cut it. I bought the SB50DX..a super add on, and well worth the money. Read more Less

Professional Featured Camera

By Yahoo! Shopping User  Mar 29, 2004 | 13 out of 13 found this Nikon Coolpix 5400 review helpful

Pros: Wide angle lens, very good color, excellent auto-flash pictures

Cons: Dim-light auto focus not good

I have owned this camera for 8 months, and have taken about 2,000 pictures. This camera tends to get 5 star ratings or 2 star ratings. This is because, you really have to learn the small details of what settings to use for the particular shot, to get... the best picture. The camera works the auto-flash mode almost perfectly, but the manual mode must be used to get the best daylight pictures. And, the manual mode requires you to pick the camera settings. So, you can get very high quality pictures with this camera, but that requires professional 'how to use the camera' knowledge. The camera comes with a 160 page operating manual, but the details of optimizing the camera settings, would be for another book.This camera can also be used to make movies, with sound. The movies are in Quicktime (.mov) format, with up to 3 minutes per clip. You can edit and combine clips to make one long movie using Quicktime Pro software. Picture quality is good, provided the scene is well lit.You will have to buy a lot of memory, for this camera, if you take a large number of pictures and make movies. I personally have 1 GB of flash memory cards, for my camera. A movie clip can be 50 MB long, and pictures will take .5 to 15 MB each, depending on size and data compression.Users have complained that this camera is slow to make rapid fire consectutive pictures. This is true if you use the 2,592x1944 pixel mode. Use the 1600x1200 fine jpg pixel mode; and this gives fast rapid fire pictures. I use the 1600x1200 fine jpg mode about 95% of the time, because picure quailty is nearly the same as the 2,592x1944 mode, and memory transfer speed is much quicker.I recommend this camera for the semi-professional photographer, or the amateur photographer who wants a 'one notch below' professional grade camera. Nikon would have to have to move the lens diameter from 23 mm to 35 mm, quadruple the internal memory to 256MB, and increase the memory and processing speed about 5 times, to move the camera into the professional category. But the price tag would be 3 times larger, and the camera would not be compact in size. Read more Less

best camera in 5m pix class... period!

By Yahoo! Shopping User  Jul 30, 2003 | 7 out of 8 found this Nikon Coolpix 5400 review helpful

runs circles around the Sonys.. owned them both and took the sonys back after shooting with this baby for 10 mins. UNREAL PICTURE QUALITY..feels like a camera should. As simple or a trick as you want to shoot with it. You won't be sorry you sp...ent a couple hundred extra dollars on this unit. Last camera I plan to buy for 10 years . Mission accomplished... This little baby will blow your mind.Great software too. Read more Less

Excellent overall

By Yahoo! Shopping User  May 16, 2006

Pros: Great pics with excellent zoom

Cons: None

Just sharp and clear pics. Find the fancy features are rarely used but available for anyone smarter than me! Use a high speed media for rapid sequence pics.

the best camera

By Yahoo! Shopping User  Jan 25, 2006

Pros: 1

Cons: 2

I was on a long trip around the world, durig 8 mounth, and taked more than 15000 pictures with my nicon coolpix 5400. I recomended extremly this camera......

Excellent OverAll Digital wide-28mm 4x-Zoom Camera

By Yahoo! Shopping User  Jun 18, 2005

Pros: No failures at Intense use, Hi-Quality lens, Manual controls

Cons: Some accessories are mandatory for PRO use

Handy, good rubber grip, easy controls, quite quick response (similar with other cameras from the same category). Very good lens, virtually no chromatic aberations, low lens distorsion. At 28-116mm zoom, excellent with 28mm wide and very good at 116m...m tele. No image stabilizer: few missed tele-shots. Good focusing, but poor low light AF, and smooth zoom. Excellent metering: matrix, spot, center-weighted and spot AF area. White balance: auto, manual and 6 other presets. Manual controls of contrast and saturation. Excelent colors (less vivid comparative with Fuji, Sony, Canon, Minolta). Continuous shoting: single, high, low, multi (16 shots), ultra HS and 5 shot buffer. Best shot selector (BSS): on, off and AE exposure (highlight, shadow and hystogram.) Auto +/- bracketing: 0.3, 0.7 and 1.0 with 3 and 5 shoots. Image quality: HI (TIF), Fine, Normal and basic. Image size: 5MP, 2MP, 1MP, PC, TV and 3:2. Sensitivity: 50, 100, 200, 400, and Auto. Noise under control at 400 ASA, but still high. Image sharpening: Auto, High, Normal, Low, and Off. Lens adapters: wide, tele, slide copy adapter, fisheye. AE Lock: On, Off. Exposure options: Auto, Manual, Auto, Shutter, Program, Scene , Movie , Bulb and Time release. Autofocus area mode: Auto, Manual, Off. Autofocus mode: single AF, Continuous AF. Zoom options: digital tele and fixed aperture. Speedlight options: flash exp. compensation, speedlight control and repeating flash. Accesories (mandatory for me): I needed faster save on CompactFlash memory of my shots with flash, so I used external SB-80DX. AF assist and flash zoom was not implemented for external flashes. Memory: 2 CompactFlash of 256 or 512 each. Bateries: 2 aditional batteries (they had a short lifetime, below 1 year, besides the no shocks use). Cons: Histogram still not implemented in record review mode, no AF assist lamp, poor low light AF, poor buffering, locks camera towards end of write process, Manual focus mode has no distance readout, need for external flash. Wide and Tele need adaptor, are heavy and do not offer full frame use for the built-in lens. Read more Less

Only one major drawback

By Yahoo! Shopping User  Mar 21, 2005

Pros: Feature laden

Cons: LCD screen is far too small

I really loved this camera, but if you are an over-the-hill (60 years old) photo enthusiast like myself, you will quickly realize that the postage-stamp sized LCD is far too small to review anything but close-ups of the grandchildren, and then, only ...if the pix is of one child. Trying to review any type of group picture or landscape shot is all but impossible, given the small size of the LCD. I ended up returning the camera to the store of purchase because of this one failing. It was other wise a fine camera, although the wide-angle/telephoto zoom control was not in a good position when trying to shoot pix using the viewfinder, which is necessary for continuous mode shooting because as in all digital cameras that I've used, the LCD goes dark when the pix is snapped, thereby making it impossible to track action shots with the LCD. The viewfinder has a diopter adjustment for correcting vision differences which is a real bonus. Read more Less

Well on the plus side it takes great photos :)

By Yahoo! Shopping User  Jul 29, 2003 | 3 out of 11 found this Nikon Coolpix 5400 review helpful

It's a very expensive camera with a max resolution that most will never use on a day to day basis. A feature set that most may never use. It is almost impossible to operate without the LCD. It has no wireless remote. The settings are too compl...icated for most newbies and too clumsy for the experiance users. The pictures look great though :) Read more Less