Nikon Coolpix L25 review

Now that mobile phones are able to take respectable snaps, why would anyone bother with a low-cost dedicated camera? There are two reasons we can think of. One is to have an optical zoom, a feature that designers have yet to squeeze inside the tiny proportions of a mobile phone. The other is that not everyone owns a camera-phone. There are lots of people who are too young for, can’t afford or simply don’t want a snazzy smartphone, but who still want a camera.

The Nikon L25 caters for all of these groups. It’s cheap, simple enough for the most ardent technophobe to use and comes with a 5x zoom lens. There’s no optical stabilisation, though – a feature that’s rare at this price but not unheard of. It doesn’t have an orientation sensor, either, so portrait-shaped photos must be rotated manually on the PC. The bulbous plastic body and use of AA batteries make no secret of its low price, but Nikon has still managed to fit a 3in screen into its petite dimensions. It even comes with a two-year warranty.

The controls are basic even compared to other point-and-shoot cameras, with no control over the ISO speed, autofocus area or metering. Exposure compensation and white balance are included, though, so basic corrections for tricky lighting conditions are possible.

Performance puts many pricier cameras to shame. It switched on and captured a shot in a shade over two seconds, and subsequent shots were 1.4 seconds apart. Continuous mode ran at 1.4fps, slowing to 0.7fps after five shots. Autofocus was generally quick and reliable, but the lack of an autofocus-assist lamp meant it sometimes struggled in low light, taking up to two seconds when the zoom was fully extended. It also struggled for flash photography, where the use of AA batteries meant we had to wait for 12 seconds for the flash to charge up between shots. On the upside, AA batteries last a lot longer than the wafer-thin Li-ion batteries that come with other low-cost cameras – Nikon claims 370 shots from a pair of 2300mAh NiMH batteries.

It’s great to find HD video recording here. On pricier cameras we’d complain about the 720p rather than 1080p resolution, the inefficient M-JPEG encoding and the inability to zoom and refocus while recording, but at this price these are fair compromises. Picture quality was a little noisy indoors but details were sharp. With a dedicated record button and clip lengths up to 15 minutes, it’s not a bad effort for a £60 camera.

The modestly rated 10-megapixel sensor strikes a sensible balance between details and noise levels, but this 1/3in sensor is quite a bit smaller than the usual 1/2.3in chips. That limits its light-gathering abilities, which in turn raises noise levels. It’s mounted behind a relatively bright lens though, opening up to f/2.7 at the wide-angle end of the zoom. This gives a small benefit to low-light photography, but optical stabilisation would have brought a much bigger benefit.

Noise isn’t too intrusive here, but we’re lucky to have achieved a sharp picture at a shutter speed as slow as 1/8s. Many others in this set were blurred – click to enlarge

When the camera chose faster shutter and ISO speeds, blur was less of a problem but noise was quite intrusive – click to enlarge

Specs aside, image quality isn’t much of an improvement on what we see from smartphone cameras. Even in bright conditions, subtle details were mistaken for noise and smudged away by noise reduction, and sharp lines looked a little spidery. The centre of frames were reasonably sharp but focus deteriorated towards the edges, particularly on left side of the frame. This was strong enough to be visible even after we’d resized photos to fit on a computer screen. It wasn’t such a problem at telephoto zoom positions, though.

This detail shot shows the extent of the L25’s focus problems, with a significant deterioration towards the left – click to enlarge

Low-light photography revealed the usual noise problems that come from a small sensor. Skin tones were grainy and flecked with multi-coloured blotches, and there was very little in the way of fine details. We also found that the automatic exposure settings were unpredictable, sometimes picking sensible settings but at other times shooting at slow ISO speeds and shutter speeds as slow as 1/3s. This inevitably lead to camera shake.

We’d be happy to forgive the L25 for having basic image quality, but the poor edge focus and excessively long shutter speeds are a little too troublesome for our liking. We haven’t reviewed a camera this cheap in a while, but the Pentax Optio RS1500 is now available for around £60. The two cameras are on a par for video capture, but the Pentax’s optical stabilisation, larger sensor and sharper lens make it the better buy.