Nikon COOLPIX 4300 Digital Camera [4MP 3xOptical]

Product Information

The COOLPIX 4300, which was released in September 2002 and designed as a sister camera of high-end COOLPIX series 950 to 4500 of which a distinctive swivel design enabling the lens to point anywhere you want got many attentions, has almost all features of the high-end camera like exposure compensation and manual exposure although it has a scene mode convenient for a novice. The lens of the COOLPIX 4300 is equivalent to 38 to 115mm by conversion into the 135-type film, but due to the small screen size, the focal length is in fact equivalent to only 8mm on the wide angle and 24mm even on the telephoto. The lens focal length of the digital camera is definitely short when compared with the one of the film camera. Therefore, the depth of field becomes deep. (see sample 1)

Nikon COOLPIX 4300, COOLPIX 4500 EN-EL1 USB Charger for Nikon COOLPIX 4300, COOLPIX 4500

From a viewpoint of optical designing, the pupil position is optimized for CCD by adding the positive group to the zoom lens of the two groups used in a wide-angle zoom lens, and then the group 3 reduces spherical aberration produced by the group1 and 2. Thus this optical design realizes a high performance most suitable for the digital camera. The focus adjustment by the group 3 has a characteristic that the lens is focused to the close distance with a slight lens movement on the wide-angle side in comparison with the telephoto side. Then, moving by an electric cum with a stepping motor, the group 3 enables the macro photography of 4cm just in front of the lens by focusing with full use of a surplus lens movement amount of the group 3 available on the wide-angle side. Advantages are a well above-average image quality regarding sharpness. Color rendition is accurate, especially regarding the critical leaf-green shades. It is, however, under-saturated, and often needs to be improved by subsequent processing. The camera has many setting options, but unfortunately, saturation is not one of them. It also has a zoom-linked optical viewfinder.

High resolution, 1,050 - 1,100 lines of "strong detail." About average barrel distortion, and low pincushion. Gavin has over 30 year experience of writing about photography and television. He is currently the editor of British Photographic Industry News, and previously served as editor of Which Digital Camera and deputy editor of Total Digital Photography.

Nikon Coolpix 4300, four megapixel - Digital Photography Review Nikon Coolpix 4300, four megapixel - Digital Photography Review

In the 135-type film camera, the values of depth of field are obtained by defining the smallest permissible diameter of the circle of confusion (that is a limit to the smallness of detail which the eye can perceive) as 1/30mm. When the depth of field of the COOLPIX is calculated with the same definition from the ratio of the screen size, the depth becomes deep approximately by the ratio of the 135-type film camera to the screen size though a detailed explanation is omitted herein. The rough ratio of the screen size is calculated by dividing the focal length of the 135-type film camera converted from the one of the COOLPIX by the real focal length. The focal length of the COOLPIX 4300 is equivalent to 38 - 115mm in the 135-type film camera although the real focal length thereof is 8 - 24mm, so the ratio of the screen size is 4.8 times, namely, the depth of field is 4.8 times deeper in comparison with the zoom lens 38 - 115mm of the 135-type film camera. To put it in other way, we can get the depth of field to the same extent that a lens of f/2.8 is stopped down to f/13 and the f/4.9 lens is down to f/24, too. *1 Excellent low-light performance: Great color balance, fairly low noise, but no AF assist light, and no distance readout in manual focus mode. Overall results are similar to the wider shot above, and the Coolpix 4300's 3x zoom lens helps prevent distortion of Marti's features. Detail is outstanding, with very sharp details in Marti's face and hair. (Probably more detail here than Marti would care to see, which is why I don't show it to her 1:1 on screen;-) The shot at right was taken at the default exposure setting, which is just a little bright, but loses only the brightest highlights. Detail is strong in the shadow areas, with moderately low noise. An excellent job.Viewers of you have had an idea about the fact that a lens performance falls off if the lens is stopped down too much, haven't you? Light has a corpuscular nature that light goes straight, whereas light has a wave nature that light diffracts a bit around the edge of the aperture stop. As the lens is being stopped down, a component of diffracting light is in increase relatively and thereby definition falls off. A perfect lens f/4 with no aberrations has a resolving power of 400 lines per 1mm, but when the lens is stopped down to f/16, the resolving power is reduced to 90 lines per 1mm. One of the features is that the depth of filed is deep. To put it plainly, the depth of field is the range where the camera is focused as sharply as possible on the subject part. When the sharp focus range is narrow, it is termed shallow and it is termed deep when the range is broad as your photo enthusiasts well know. It can be said that the shorter the focal length and the larger the f-number (stop down), the greater the depth of field. When shooting by a telephoto lens with full aperture, the depth of field becomes shallow thereby the subject can stand out against nice soft out-of-focus (so-called "bokeh") areas. On the other hand, if the wide-angle lens (the shorter focal length) is stopped down for shot, the depth of field is so deep that an area from the close to far distances is in acceptably sharp focus. When a small subject is taken with a close-up shot, the lens needs to be considerably stopped down for focusing on the overall subject in the film camera. But, the subject can be shot in a bright condition since even the maximum aperture lens of the COOLPIX produces the same depth of field as with the stopped-down apertures f/13 ~ f/24. Furthermore, there is no need for hassle and annoying operations for computing an aperture value suitable for focus on the whole subject. The Nikon Coolpix 4300 is a digital camera that was made by Nikon. It was first released on October 1, 2002, and is no longer in production. At 4.0 effective megapixels, it is capable of delivering 2,272 × 1,704 pixel images. An included lens cap protects its Nikkor 3× optical Zoom lens, with a focal length of 8 to 24mm (equivalent of a field of view in 38 to 114mm lens), as well as an aperture of f/2.8–4.9 and shutter speed of 8–1/1,000 sec. It is capable of ISO equivalents of 100, 200, and 400. Most accurate color with the Manual white balance option, but better than average with Auto. A good performance.

User manual Nikon Coolpix 4300 (English - 77 pages)

Slightly low flash power, with a range closer to 8 feet in our tests than the 12 feet of Nikon's specs. This shot is always a very tough test of a camera's white balance capability, given the strong, yellowish color cast of the household incandescent bulbs used for the lighting. The Coolpix 4300's Manual white balance clearly produced the best color, but its Auto option did much better than average. ( Incandescent really had trouble though.) Marti's skin tone is pretty good here, and even the always-difficult blue flowers turned out pretty well. Here again, quite a bit of exposure compensation was needed, as the camera's default exposure produced very dark images. (All the shots at right were snapped with an exposure boost of +1.3 EV.) This is my ultimate "resolution shot," given the infinite range of detail in a natural scene like this, and the Coolpix 4300 performs very well. The tree limbs over the roof and fine foliage in front of the house show excellent detail, with strong definition in the leaf patterns and branch details. The image is pretty sharp corner to corner, with just a hint of the corner softness that plagues many consumer digicam lenses. The camera loses detail in the bright white paint surrounding the bay window, a trouble spot for many digicams. At the same time, the shadow area above the front door shows moderate detail but a fair bit of image noise, pointing to a somewhat limited dynamic range. The Auto white balance produces good color, though exposure is a bit contrasty. The table below shows a standard resolution and quality series, followed by ISO and sharpness series. Fig.1 is a lens structure view of the COOLPIX 4300. The lens is consisted of three groups including the first group of a negative lens as a whole, the second group of a positive lens as a whole and the third group of a single positive lens element. Wherein the lens is zoomed by moving the group 1 and 2 and is focused by moving the group 3 as indicated in the figure.And with the fast lens, the faster shutter speed can be used, so a hand-held shot is possible with no handshake without stable holding with a tripod when the ambient conditions permit. For shots like daily box lunch, record of assembling a model, new growth of cultivating plants a photo of merchandise for internet auction and the like, the ease-of-use COOLPIX is the best. It can be said that the macro photography is what the digital camera is most good at. (see sample 4) The Coolpix 4300 performed well on our "laboratory" resolution test chart. It started showing artifacts in the test patterns at resolutions as low as 800 lines per picture height in both vertical and horizontal directions. I found "strong detail" out to about 1,050 lines per picture height in the vertical direction, and about 1,100 lines horizontally. "Extinction" of the target patterns occurred about 1,300 lines.