*   Contents

• 1  Coolpix Features
• 2  Broken Features and Missing Features
  • 2.1  User Interface Deficiencies
  • 2.2  USB Limitations
• 3  Miscellaneous Notes
• 4  Summary
• 5  References

1  Coolpix Features

This camera has many fine features and several outstanding features. This tempts you to expect that the rest of the features would be designed to the same high standard, but the user interface and the USB interface are not. This camera can take great pictures. I don’t know of anything better – but I am still disappointed and wistful, because with a few modest changes this camera could have been made much friendlier. Much, much friendlier.

My favorite features include:

• It excels at close-up "macro" shots. Competing brands don’t come anywhere close.
• It is small enough to take along almost anywhere.
• Although some people mock its swiveling mechanical design, likening it to a "transformer" toy, it actually makes sense. It can have a long optical path in a small package, without the complexity of multi-stage telescoping. This is probably not unrelated to the excellent macro performance.
• The optics are good and sharp.
• The LCD viewfinder is well-behaved. This is in marked contrast to the more-or-less comparable Canon model, where the LCD isn’t bright enough and suffers strange color-shifts depending on viewing angle.

The camera has the four basic exposure modes (Programmed-auto, Aperture-priority, Shutter-priority, and Manual ... P, A, S, and M, respectively). It also has about 16 fancy "scene" modes, such as Close-up, Night-portrait, Party/Indoor, et cetera). Most of these appear to be variations on Programmed-auto mode, with various tweaks and biases applied to the program, but they are so poorly documented that one can’t be sure.

See reference 1 for a fuller discussion of facts and figures on the many, many features of this camera.

2  Broken Features and Missing Features

Overview:

• The lens isn’t the fastest thing you’ll ever see. The flash partially makes up for this, but not completely, because you still need quite a bit of light to make the autofocus (or focus confirmation) features work.
• The user interface is poorly designed; see section 2.1.
• The USB interface is for file-transfer only. No camera control, not even shutter release via USB; see section 2.2.
• The EXIF header in the .jpg file doesn’t contain focus-distance information. Other brands manage to include this.
• The User Guide is superficial. I would have liked to see a lot more technical information about what the various features do.
• The User Guide is wrong in some places. For example, it says «The setup menu can be accessed from the shooting menu in P, S, A, and M modes.» However, as far as I can tell, the setup menu is only accessible from the full-screen playback mode. Furthermore, even starting from full-screen playback mode, after you bring up the playback menu, it is not self-documenting how to get from there to the setup menu. The trick is to push the multi-selector joystick to the right.

  The setup menu allows you to set the date, among other things. When setting the date, you have to click the center of the multi-selector joystick in order for the changes to take effect.

2.1  User Interface Deficiencies

• In general, there is an overall lack of orthogonality. Features that ought to be independent have illogical interactions.
• As a conspicuous example of non-orthogonality, the manual-focus feature is only available in the four basic exposure modes (P, S, A, and M), not in any of the "scene" modes.
• There is no quantitative information about the focus-distance when using manual focus. There is only a low-precision qualitative indication, i.e. a thermometer-style bar that goes from "flowers" (near focus) to "mountains" (far focus). It is impossible to choose a desired focus-distance a priori and dial it in. It is not even easy to reproduce a previously-used focus-distance setting. This is in contrast to other brands, which manage to display a numerical value for the focus-distance. Even some scale of tick-marks against which the thermometer bar could be compared would be a step in the right direction. Tick-marks plus digits would be ideal.
• The "focus confirmation" feature is useful only on rare occasions. It applies a faint "highlighting" effect to the in-focus region, but the effect is usually not sufficiently noticeable, even if you know exactly what to look for.
• It takes two hands to dial in a manual-focus setting. This is in contrast with, say, the exposure-bias setting, which can be dialled using only one hand, even while holding the camera in the same hand.
• The battery status indicator does not appear at all unless the battery is low. That means you can’t just grab the camera and run; you don’t know whether the battery is almost full or almost low.

If I had been designing this thing, I would have put a few more function buttons on top, where there’s plenty of room, so that there would be 100% orthogonal one-handed control of

• Shutter exposure time (in S and M modes).
• Aperture (in A and M modes).
• Exposure bias (in P, S, and A modes).
• Focus distance (in all exposure modes).
• Zoom.
• Shifting of the "spot" when spot-focus and/or spot-metering are being used.

It should go without saying that those six functions should be orthogonal to the mode-selection function. I wouldn’t mind if mode-selection were to require two hands; right now it requires only one, which illustrates the poor sense of priorities in the current design. Zoom, spot-control, and one other function can be conveniently controlled, which means three of the six functions cannot.

2.2  USB Limitations

The USB interface is horribly limited. Apparently it can do file transfer and nothing else. This is in contrast with other brands, and indeed early Coolpix models, where you could at least perform shutter release via USB.

The camera ships with a CDROM containing a bunch of Nikon software for doing image transfers. I cannot imagine why anybody would install the software. The camera appears on the USB bus as a standard mass-storage device. This means you can plug it into just about any computer (Linux, Macintosh, Microsoft) and transfer the pictures as ordinary .jpg files.

Since they went to the trouble of providing a USB interface, I was hoping they would provide full USB control of the camera. I would have liked to use the camera to take a series of time-lapse photos: Using software such as PhotoPC (reference 2) via USB, I would like to set the focus and exposure et cetera, release the shutter, transfer the .jpg file, wait, and iterate. But no; Nikon wants you to just take pictures manually and then transfer the files.

You can’t take pictures (manually or otherwise) while the USB cable is connected. All camera functions including the LCD display shut down when the USB cable is connected.

To perform remote shutter release, Nikon wants you to buy an expensive, non-USB, non-computer-compatible widget. However, according to reference 3, you can make your own cable and control the shutter release from your computer via the serial port (not USB). I haven’t tried this, and I don’t know whether it is possible to use the serial channel for file transfer or any purpose other than simple shutter release.

3  Miscellaneous Notes

Buttons on the top of the camera:

The ring around the shutter release button:  rotate
it clockwise, to turn the camera on/off (alternate
action switch).

The shutter-release button:  
 *) If you push it halfway down:
  -- it gets you out of review mode.
  -- it causes the auto-focus calculations to be done,
   whereupon the lens elements move, and then hold their
   chosen position, even if you re-aim the camera.
  -- the flash pops up, assuming flash isn't in
   never-flash mode, and isn't unnecessary in auto
   flash modes.
 *) If you push it all the way down:
  -- normally it just takes the picture, except
  -- in delay mode, it starts the delay timer, and
   then expiration of the timer takes the picture.


The "mode" switch:
 *) If you just tap it:  in manual mode, toggles
  the wheel from controlling f/stop to controlling
  exposure time, and vice versa.
 *) If you hold it while turning the wheel, you
  cycle through the major modes, namely:
   -- Auto (point and shoot)
   -- Funk
   -- Program (semi-auto?)
   -- Shutter-priority
   -- Aperture-priority
   -- Manual (control freak)

The "func" switch:
 *) In all shooting modes, if you hold it while turning 
  the wheel, it controls the lighter/darker bias.
 *) In review mode, if/while you hold it down, you can
  record an audio commentary on a picture you've taken.

The "flash" switch:  
 *) If you tap it, it cycles through the flash modes,
  namely:
   -- no flash (bolt crossed out)
   -- anti-redeye (eye symbol)
   -- plain flash (bolt)
   -- fill?  (backlit subject)
   -- auto (blank, nothing where the flash symbol would be).
 *) If you hold it while turning the wheel, it controls
  what I think is flash energy, a number from 100 to 800,
  or "AUTO".

The wheel, by itself:
 *) In auto mode, doesn't do anything AFAICT.
 *) In funk closeup mode, doesn't do anything AFAICT.
 *) In P mode, moves you to P* modes, giving you control
  of depth of field, i.e. wheel to the left introduces a
  bias toward slower f/stops with longer exposure times.
 *) In S mode, controls the shutter (exposure time).
 *) In A mode, controls the aperture (f/stop).
 *) In M mode, controls either the shutter or the
  aperture (whichever is green at the moment).  Tap
  the "func" switch to toggle between the two possibilities.

4  Summary

You can take very good pictures with this camera. But in this price range, I would have expected a much better-designed user interface and a much more capable USB interface.

5  References

1.

http://www.dpreview.com/reviews/nikoncp4500/

2.

http://www.math.ualberta.ca/imaging/

3.

http://delphys.net/d.holmes/photos/coolpix_e990/e990_usb_cable.html