Design
With its matt black body, moulded grip and convertible lens mount, the Nikon Coolpix P5100 reminds us what a digital SLR would look if Rick Moranis's alter-ego, Wayne Szalinski got his hands on it. However, measuring 64.5mm by 98mm by 41mm and weighing 200 grams, this SLR-styled compact is no contender for slimmest camera.
Also similar to those of an SLR are the controls -- the camera uses a model dial and thumb wheel to switch between settings. The P5100 offers a mediocre 3.5x optical zoom which is only slightly more than the 3x minimum found on the smallest compacts. To make up for this, the lens allows telephoto and wide-angle converter lenses to extend the zoom.
The built-in flash is adequate, though Nikon has included a hot shoe, giving you the option of adding an external flash. We paired our review unit with the Speedlight SB-800 (the SB-400, SB-600 and SB-800 are compatible) but found the flash almost doubled the size of the unit, making it too top-heavy to shoot comfortably.
Features
Boasting 12-megapixels, the P5100 offers a 2.5-inch LCD display -- modest by today's standards -- as well as an optical viewfinder, a feature that is often omitted in digital compacts these days. This is a plus for saving battery and viewing your subjects in harsh sunlight when the LCD can become washed out.
Optical image stabilisation is one of three options for reducing blur, along with Anti-Shake and High Sensitivity modes which can be found on the mode dial. The P5100 also boasts a maximum light sensitivity of ISO 3,200, but only when shooting at 5-megapixels or lower.
Possibly the biggest draw card of the P5100 is the wealth of manual exposure controls, including aperture- and shutter-priority modes usually only found on digital SLRs.
But this still isn't an SLR and thus it supports video, with a range of resolution settings -- the most interesting being the ability to create time lapse movies.
You can choose to set the frame interval from 30 seconds to up to 60 minutes but even with a fully-charged battery, we couldn't manage more than a 20 second clip before the camera went dead. Using the flash, we captured half the amount of images. There is also no control over the speed the movie is played back at and we found the timing was a little too fast for our liking.
To run the camera off the mains, Nikon make the EH-62A AC adaptor which has to be purchased separately. It retails for AU$90, so adding almost AU$100 to the cost of the camera purely to get good use out of this feature isn't cheap.
With its high resolution and video capabilities, you're going to need ample storage and thankfully Nikon has addressed this. The P5100 includes 52MB of internal memory as well as support for SD and SDHC cards.
Performance and image quality
In our tests, the P5100 produced impressive images but disappointed with its speed. We found shooting sluggish, with excessive shutter lag and sometimes unresponsive autofocus.
The P5100 produces crisp photographs with good colour reproduction and minimal aberrations. The red-eye reduction is also very effective but further slows down the processing time. Image noise was evident above ISO 200, worsening the higher we went, as expected.
Barrel distortion is an issue at wide angle, and though Nikon includes a distortion control, it's not much more effective than cropping images in Photoshop or your preferred image-editing program.
With its excellent image quality, wealth of features and manual controls, Nikon sets high expectations with the P5100, but its slow performance may deter you from an otherwise great camera.
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