Nikon's new point-and-shoot offers a VR lens and full manual control, but are its images up to par?
Review summary of the Nikon Coolpix P60:
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 On account of its optically-stabilzed lens and expansive controls, the Nikon Coolpix P60 is a good manual point-and-shoot. However, its design leaves something to be desired, and we found it occasionally difficult to use due to its boxy shape and lack of dial wheel. Still, image quality is pretty good, particularly in terms of dynamic range. All in all the Nikon P60 isn't a bad choice for a manual compact, but given its subpar design and higher starting price, it might not be the best choice, either. Release: April 2008. Price: $120.
Pros: Excellent noise management. Solid color reproduction. VR lens.
Cons: Body is clunky and unattractive. Strange grip makes for awkward handling.
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Full Nikon Coolpix P60 Review:
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Design - Good
The Nikon Coolpix P60 feels boxy and cheaply constructed, with a goofy body that belies its high sticker price. Too thick, too tall, and naggingly larger than it should be, it's a camera with too much wasted space and some aesthetic choices we found unattractive. Moreover, in use it feels airy and toyish, almost akin to a disposable.
The top has a nice mode-wheel alongside the shutter release and power buttons, and the back features a four-way controller, two-way zoom buttons, and four shortcut buttons. Unfortunately, The Nikon P60 lacks a dial wheel, which would have made the manual mode much more usable. Nestled in the bottom-left corner is the 2.5-inch screen, itself dwarfed by the camera's bloat, and above that is an unnecessary electronic-viewfinder.
Along the front-right is a raised grip, nicely adorned with rubber padding. Unfortunately, given that the Nikon Coolpix P60 is a standard compact-camera, we found the grip to much more cumbersome than useful. Point-and-shoots are typically held between the thumbs and forefingers, making a full-body grip superfluous. We did attempt to alter our shooting style to accommodate the bevel, but it only led to awkward hand configurations.
Features - Very good
The P60 makes up for its body with an impressive feature-set, including in-camera red-eye correction, above-average ISO range (80-2000), full manual controls, 12-megabytes of built-in memory, and, most importantly, a 5x lens with Nikon's 'VR' optical image-stabilization.
The manual mode works as expected and offers independent shutter / aperture selections, although gain control is not available. The shutter has a good range of speeds, from 8 – 1/1200 seconds, but the aperture only offers two f-stops, f/3.6 and f/8.5. This at least allows for both shallow and deep-focus photography at appropriate apertures (any wider would be unexpected of a compact lens, and any tighter with such a small sensor would lead to diffraction), though Canon's manual point-and-shoots have a full range of selectable f-stops.
The stabilized Nikkor lens more than makes up for the camera's comparatively low megapixel count, and in our tests sharp exposures were doable even at low shutter-speeds. However, it should be noted that, when shooting video, electronic stabilization is used instead. This is strange and disappointing, considering that motion-recordings benefit even more from good stabilization than still pictures.
The Nikon P60 also has a full range of burst modes, including continuous-shooting, a 16-shot burst, and Nikon's ‘Best Shot Selector,' which snaps 10 photos and then intelligently selects the sharpest. All of the burst modes are appreciably fast, and the BSS function should prove efficacious for those seeking no-hassle action shots.
Interface - Very good
The P60 is undeniably an easy-to-use camera. Buttons are logically laid-out, a bit oversized, and clearly labeled. The mode-wheel is likewise intuitive, and the various display modes are quickly cycled through by the large viewfinder button, situated dead-center over the LCD screen.
The menus themselves are simple and functional. In full-automatic, the setup menu has only two options: JPEG size and quality, while in full-manual there are 10 options, ranging from white-balance to ISO to AF area. Contrast, sharpening and saturation settings are a bit buried and difficult to find, but all the options we expected were present. Our only real complaint would be that the system settings are accessible only in a special ‘setup mode,' itself accessible only by the mode-wheel. This is more complicated than simply having a dedicated setup button, the lack of which is all the more confounding considering the P60's tracts of wasted surface-area.
The bundle includes a dispensable software suite that contains drivers, a panorama maker and a transfer utility, but did not include basic storage or editing utilities, though the install program did deign to infest our computer with an entire folder of HTML links to order pages for other software. At its steep price point, the P60 should come with this software, and leave the folder of bloat behind. Otherwise the camera comes with a wrist-strap, a USB cable, and an A/V cable.
Image quality - Very good
Noise management is excellent across the board, even all the way to the maximum ISO-2000 setting. White balance and color reproduction are accurate at all ISOs, and interpolation noise is tightly packed, resulting in sharp, pleasing images.
Scene test
The Nikon P60 performed quite well in this scene test: noise is diffused and unnoticeable, colors are spot-on, and the image overall is clean and three-dimensional. Color rendering in particular is excellent, resulting in stand-out greens and yellows against the muted reds of the brick edifice.
Edge test
In this edge test, the P60 again performs superbly: there are no halos or fringing, edges are well-delineated, and noise is non-existent. Shadow detail is well above-average for a point-and-shoot. In many other compacts the leaves would've been reduced to silhouettes. Indeed, the P60's strongest feature is its expansive dynamic-range, a result of what Nikon terms 'D-Lighting,' a hand-me-down feature from HDR processing on their DSLR cameras.
Macro test
In this close-up shot of tape on a street pole, the Nikon P60's macro performance is less compelling, as its focusing range is subpar (only to within ~six inches) and lens aberrations are clearly visible in the bottom corners.
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