Nikon Coolpix A review

Camera manufacturers aren’t known for coming up with catchy names, but there’s a growing trend to reduce the meaningless jumble of numbers and letters to a single character. So hot on the heels of the Canon EOS M and Canon PowerShot N, we have the Nikon Coolpix A.

The high price means there’s no doubt that this is an enthusiasts’ camera. The APS-C sensor – the same size that’s used in most SLRs – and a prime (fixed-zoom) lens provide further confirmation. Fitting such a large sensor into a compact camera is no mean feat, and it’s all the more impressive considering how small and light it is. Weighing in at 299g and measuring 40mm from front to back, it should fit into spacious trouser pockets. That’s in marked contrast to other compact cameras with APS-C sensors, such as the Fujifilm X100S (445g, 59mm) and the Canon G1 X (534g, 75mm).

It looks just as luxurious as we’d expect at this price. Its blocky aluminium and magnesium alloy shell feels extremely robust, and there’s just enough contour on the front and back to give a comfortable grip. We really appreciate the integrated lens cap, which is much more convenient than having to take the cap off and stick it in a pocket. The lack of a viewfinder is surprising considering the target market, though. An optional optical viewfinder (part code DF-CP1) costs around £250.

The metal buttons have a decisive click to them, and the various rotary controllers have just the right amount of resistance for precise operation. However, this camera is surprisingly reliant on its menus to give access to shooting functions. There are dedicated buttons for exposure compensation and ISO speed, plus a customisable Fn button on the front that we assigned to drive mode – all three are adjusted by holding down the button and spinning the command dial. The autofocus point is moved via the navigation pad but it trundles around the frame pretty slowly. There’s no quick access to white balance, autofocus mode, video recording or the Auto ISO setting. Most of these can be accessed by pressing the i button and navigating the on-screen icons, but enabling and customising the Auto ISO function requires a trip to the main menu.

Nikon has managed to find room for a Help button. Pressing it reveals explanations and tips for the currently highlighted function, but some are trivially brief while others are long winded and hard to follow. Regardless, it seems odd to have a dedicated Help button on such an expensive camera that’s unlikely to appeal to beginners.

We’re surprised that it doesn’t have a dedicated exposure compensation wheel, as many of its rivals do. To be fair, though, we’re not sure where it would have fit. The lack of an HDR mode is less forgivable, seeing as it’s included on Nikon’s recent SLRs. The Coolpix A is compatible with Nikon flashguns and optional GPS and Wi-Fi units, but these are unwieldy accessories for such a small camera. We’d have preferred to have Wi-Fi built in. The 1/2,000s maximum shutter speed is unusually slow, and there’s no neutral density (ND) filter to help out in excessively bright conditions. The 230-shot battery life is disappointing – we’d recommend spending £35 on a spare.

The lens specifications are a little underwhelming, too. Its f/2.8 maximum aperture isn’t particularly bright, capturing half as much light as the Fujifilm X100S’s f/2 lens. Unlike the Canon G1 X, there’s no optical stabilisation. The 28mm (equivalent) focal length gives a wide-angle view that’s fine for landscapes and cityscapes but isn’t so suited to portraits. The 10cm macro mode is pretty good considering the large sensor, but in the normal autofocus mode, the lens refused to focus closer than 50cm. Annoyingly, the camera simply captured a blurry photo rather than refusing to shoot – Nikon’s SLRs offer a choice of focus or shutter-release priority to avoid this problem.

This camera is pitched at keen photographers who are used to using SLRs, so it needs to be quick. The 4fps continuous mode is up to scratch, maintaining this speed for 100 JPEGs, and slowing to 1.6fps after 16 raw shots. Focus doesn’t update between shots, but the wide-angle lens and modest f/2.8 maximum aperture keeps everything in reasonably sharp focus anyway – despite the large sensor, this isn’t the best camera for shallow depth-of-field effects.

Autofocus was pedestrian, taking up to a second and never quicker than half a second in our tests. It might be unreasonable to expect a compact camera to compete with SLRs for autofocus speed, but various CSCs manage it. Photos took one second to appear on the screen after capture. We were able to capture a photo every 0.7 seconds, but the screen was blank for the entire time and the camera didn’t bother to refocus between shots. If we wanted to recompose the shot on the screen and refocus, we had to slow down to 1.8 seconds between shots.

The Coolpix A’s saving grace is its image quality. Fixed-zoom lenses tend to be extremely sharp and this one is no exception, with crisp focus from corner to corner at f/4 and narrower apertures. The camera sensibly chose apertures around f/5.6 in bright light, but focus was still pretty good when low light demanded the widest f/2.8 aperture, with only a small falloff towards the edges.

This shot is exceptionally crisp and detailed, with no sign that the camera is struggling with the dense texture of similar colours

Focus remains excellent in the centre of the frame even with the f/2.8 lens wide open

The sensor pulled its weight, too, with a 16-megapixel resolution and no optical low-pass filter delivering the same small benefit to detail that we saw from the Nikon D7100. Otherwise, this is the same sensor that’s used in the Nikon D7000, which means seriously low noise for a compact camera, but not in the same league as the Fujifilm X100S.

The large sensor meant we could use shutter-priority mode and freeze motion with a 1/250s shutter speed without photos succumbing to noise in low light

Noise is more noticeable at ISO 2800 but it’s far from intrusive

Noise at ISO 12800 is hard to ignore. It’s fine for sharing photos online but it’s not a match for the Fujifilm X100S

The video mode is tucked away among the drive mode options but it’s fairly well specified, with 1080p recording at 24, 25 or 30fps and the option to set the exposure manually. Details in videos were impressively sharp but it was prone to swirling moiré interference. Continuous autofocus is available and it didn’t spoil the soundtrack, but it could be pretty slow to adjust itself.

There are many positive traits to the Coolpix A, from its sumptuous image quality to its reassuringly solid build quality. However, the concept feels a little confused. It’s too expensive to compete with premium compacts such as the Panasonic Lumix DMC-LX7, but it doesn’t have the viewfinder and tactile controls of the Fujifilm X100S. For £800, you could buy a CSC (such as the Sony NEX-5R) with a kit zoom lens and a pancake wide-angle lens, letting you choose between portability or a zoom function.

The Coolpix A is significantly smaller and lighter than any CSC or the X100S, though. It’s slimmer than the LX7 too. Nikon SLR owners will appreciate compatibility with their accessories, along with the familiarity of the menu system and Nikon’s JPEG colour palette. Ultimately, there are too many niggles for our liking, but it might be worth keeping an eye on the price to see if you can bag a bargain in a few months.