Get On, Clip In, Fall Off

Little and Large

Okay, so recently I purchased a super-fantasic Nikon D70 in order to take better photos of moving trains.. uh, I mean, in order to enjoy the many benefits of digital reflex photography. This is a lovely, wonderful, splendid piece of kit and you can't have mine, although I might let you look at it if you have, say, a spare Nikkor AF-S VR 70-200 f/2.8G IF-ED you could lend me for a few years.

However, it is big, and I also wanted a camera which I could carry around 'most all of the time in a belt case. While I could do this with the D70, my trousers would probably fall down, so off I went to the shops and procured a teeny-tiny Coolpix 4600. Yup, only 4MP, but that's good enough for the web and for small prints, and the price of ultracompact digital cameras starts increasing enormously beyond about the 4-5MP mark. I did lust after the 7900 as well, but at getting on for twice the price of the cheap and cheerful yet reliable 4600 it didn't seem worth it.

As a result of this, though, my dear Coolpix 8700 is now feeling rather redundant and left out - it's a great camera, but it's too big to be carried around all the time and when I'm really intending to take photos I have the DSLR anyway. I've therefore decided to let it move on to pastures new. It's a great little camera - check the review linked above for the full specs, but 8 megapixels are more than the most enthusiastic cropper will need, the optical zoom is nice and long (rarely any need for that digital zoom rubbish) and it handles really well. It also takes Compact Flash cards as opposed to anything else, which is an advantage from the price and availability point of view. It comes with the manual, neck strap, battery, charger, etc, and a 256MB CF card. Just thought I'd mention it here - I'm looking for about £275 for it - digital compacts don't hold their resale value much, you know. Otherwise it'll go on good old eBay.
Posted by mpk at August 8, 2005 1:24 PM