Optimized for tweens and other entry-level users, Nikon's latest L series compact camera impressed. Check out our in-depth Nikon Coolpix L18 review.
Review summary of the Nikon Coolpix L18:
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 The Nikon Coolpix L18 takes good pictures for the price and should suit entry-level users well. The lens is particularly good, so images are clean, accurate and have little to no distortion. Colors are muted, however, and the vivid color mode can produce wacky results. The L18 also offers a bare minimum in terms of customization and manual controls, so it's really only appropriate for the most ardent point-and-shooters. We do like the inclusion of D-lighting in an entry-level camera, though it seems bizarre that Nikon wouldn't also have full face detection. We'd confidently recommend the L18 to someone looking for a literal 'push the button take a photograph' device, but anyone else shouldn't be setting their sights this low. Release: March 2008. Price: $100.
Pros: Good image quality. D-lighting is useful. Simple control scheme.
Cons: Simplicity verges on crippling. Lens housing is wobbly.
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Full Nikon Coolpix L18 Review:
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Design - Good
The Nikon Coolpix L18 is streamlined to the essentials. The back houses the expansive 3.0-inch LCD viewfinder, and the back right contains a four-way controller, the zoom control and two shortcuts. It's a minimal design with minimal controls, but such simplicity makes sense for a full-auto point-and-shoot camera.
The design is standard but well executed. The build feels solid and durable, and the Nikon Coolpix L18 has a classy touch that separates it from the dinkier-looking low-ends. A bevel along the right side makes the camera easier to hold, and the shutter-release is oversized and easy to depress. The lens itself extends out in a series of diminishing disks, which looks cool but could easily be bent out of shape, so take care when the lens is protracted.
Interface - Good
The Nikon Coolpix L18 seems to adhere to the 'less is more' philosophy, as there's very little in the way of controls. In the 'easy auto' mode, there are no shot settings. In the normal auto mode, the camera allows you to select white balance and image resolution. This level of strict automation is perfectly acceptable in a point-and-shoot camera, but all the same, we would have liked at least an ISO selector. Otherwise, the camera has shortcuts for timed shutter, macro, flash and exposure compensation.
The camera can boot-up and start taking pictures within a second or two. Unfortunately, it was frequently difficult to get the power button to register and actually turn the camera on, so we can't reccomend it as a rapid startup camera. The issue feels like a flaky connection in the power button itself, something that Nikon could easily fix for the L19. Regardless, auto-focus and processing delays were often significant (several seconds each), so the camera isn't really usable for break-neck shooting, anyway.
The LCD screen is certainly bigger than we expected for a lower-range compact. At 3.0-inches, it's essentially as big as they come outside of massive DSLRs. Its actual image is more befitting of the camera's price, though, as the image is a little on the dim side and not particularly responsive. Gain is present in darker environments, but that's to be expected from most any electronic viewfinder.
Features - Mediocre
The Nikon Coolpix L18 has Nikon's full suite of continuous-shooting modes, including continuous, burst and BSS. It also includes D-lighting, Nikon's dynamic-range booster, which can be applied and removed as necessary in the playback mode. D-lighting is a nice feature to have on such a low-price camera, as it can noticeably and easily improve image quality, especially in contrasty scenes where one section of a photo is bright but others are too dark.
Advanced face detection is not available, though Nikon has included a basic face-priority AF mode that automatically focuses on faces. The camera also has an ‘anti-shake mode,' which detects if the subject is moving and boosts the ISO and shutter-speed to prevent motion blur. Nikon at least isn't calling this a form of image-stabilization, as some other manufacturers have misleadingly claimed, but it still barely qualifies as a feature.
The lens is a 3x Nikkor, and the camera offers 15 scene modes. Manual options are poor even for a lower end compact, as we couldn't even override ISO selection or tweak contrast and saturation settings. The Nikon Coolpix L18 at least offers a few color filters, including 'vivid,' sepia and cyanotype, but otherwise very little customization is available.
Image quality - Good
The Nikon Coolpix L18 generally takes pleasing photos, especially if you use its 'vivid' color filter. The lens's performance was very good - we saw little to no blooming or fringing - so the L18 is a good choice for clean photographs without much distortion. Still, detail was good but unremarkable, and some conditions seemed to strain the camera and result in mushy, overblown colors. The auto-focus was also somewhat unreliable and, in several cases, focused on the background instead of the intended subject. Ultimately, the L18 performs as well as we could reasonably expect from such an inexpensive camera. Still, if you need more than a bare bones point-and-shoot, you'd be better off saving your pennies for something with more oomph.
Washington Square Park
We took the Nikon Coolpix L18 to Washington Square Park, the de facto province of hippie and hobo alike. We felt we'd start out with some cold, hard evidence of the trip. There's a heavy backlight here, and the L18 did a solid job of exposing for the foreground. There's very little blooming, all things considered, and edge performance is great for such a low-cost camera. On the other hand, the photo is washed-out even though we took it in the vivid color mode, and the green color-cast makes it vaguely unpleasant.
Invasion of the body snatchers
In this sample, however, the vivid mode practically blasted the colors into outer space. We're torn here: on one hand, we love the explosion of psychotropic uber-pinks, but on the other hand, the picture is so blown out of proportion it verges on the ridiculous. If we were to just happen upon this image, we'd chalk up its eccentricity to hyperactive Photoshopping; we'd never assume it actually came out of a camera looking like that, and yet, here we are. What's particularly interesting is that the vivid mode actually pushed the colors too much on a basic, technical level. Beyond the typical sensor noise, there are large chunks of blocking throughout the picture. These are a result of unrealistic image settings and, usually, are a tell-tale sign that someone went a little crazy with the saturation and vibrance sliders in RAW development. We like that Nikon at least supplied the camera with this vivid color mode, but we can't recommend it as much when it can wreck exposures.
Flower shots that look like flowers [wide]
Flower shots that look like flowers [tight]
Much better are these two flower shots, which also boost the saturation to the edge of reason, but here it results in pleasing photos with good pop. Detail is decent, though the white flowers have been lost to contrast crush.
The pigeon, plotting
The pigeon, plotting [botched focus]
Here we have two pictures of a huge sky rat, no doubt preparing to do something disgusting. The first shot is fair, with accurate color but more noise than we'd like. The second shot, however, is obviously out of focus, even though it was framed the same way. The AF might have been thrown off by the leg in the left background, but all the same, this is an unusable shot. Non-pros tend to gloss over the importance of a good AF system, but it's nevertheless important. Screwy AF can be the difference between a cool shot and something bound for the trash can.
Landscape [landscape mode]
Landscape [auto mode]
The L18 offers a handful of basic scene modes, so we decided to try out the 'landscape' mode and pit it against the standard auto mode. Ironically, we much prefer the latter. The full auto correctly chose a slower shutter and eked more color and detail out of the shot, whereas the 'landscape' shot is drab and underlit. Also, the L18 doesn't allow you to apply color filters to the scene modes - another instance of its anti-customization - even though landscapes would greatly benefit from the saturation and contrast of the vivid mode.
Park panorama
Finally, we popped off a series of shots with the panorama-stitcher, which helps you line up shots in succession. The L18 comes with a utility for pasting everything together on a computer, and the results aren't too shabby. Keep in mind that the photos were done hand-held, and that we didn't exactly obsess over lining them up perfectly. The left two shots in particular are surprisingly seamless. Ultimately, this is a nifty function, but nowhere near as intuitive and useful as a true panorama mode, which stitches the shots together in-camera.
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