Nikon CoolPix L5 Review |

Last week I reviewed the Fujifilm FinePix A700, a camera so basic I had a hard time finding enough to write about it. This week I have another one that’s even easier, if anything. I’d better try another DSLR soon or I’ll forget how to use a real camera.

The Nikon CoolPix L5 was launched in the UK in September last year alongside the slightly more sophisticated L6 as the top end of the lifestyle-oriented L-series of Nikon’s CoolPix L-series of simple pocket compacts. It has an exterior design that bears a superficial resemblance to the budget 4-megapixel CoolPix L4, but the resemblance is no more than superficial. The L5 offers the benefits of a 7.2-megapixel sensor, a 5x optical zoom lens, Nikon optical VR image stabilization and the current must-have gimmick, face recognition technology. It’s also a lot more expensive than the L4, currently available for around £152. Compared to other similarly-specified point-and-shoot big-zoom compact cameras like the Kodak EasyShare C875 (£140), Olympus FE-240 (£170), Ricoh Caplio R5 (£200) and Panasonic Lumix DMC-FX07 (£220 £), the L5 is quite cheap.

Although the CoolPix L5 has a few technological tricks up its sleeve, it’s a very easy-to-use camera designed for those who don’t want any frills, where all they have to do to take a picture is aim at it and push a button. Measuring 97 x 61 x 45mm and weighing around 220g including standard alkaline batteries, it’s quite large and surprisingly heavy for a compact camera, especially given the rather chunky 6.3 – 31.4mm (38 – 190mm Equiv.) lens and the fact that it is powered by two AA cells. The lens doesn’t retract all the way into the camera body, giving the camera an awkward shape to fit comfortably in your pocket. The extra size means it’s a fairly easy-to-hold camera, with well-spaced controls and plenty of gripping space front and back, but the slippery glossy finish and lack of a real hand grip mean you’ll have to keep a firm grip.

While the case itself is mostly plastic, it’s strong and well constructed, and that glossy finish helps resist smudges and scratches. The controls are solidly mounted and the battery door has a locking latch so it won’t open in your pocket. That’s a good thing, too, since the batteries don’t have an independent latch and can easily fall out when you open them to change the memory card.

The LCD monitor is clear and bright, with an effective anti-glare coating, so it can be used in bright sunlight if you can find any. However, it’s not particularly sharp at just 115,000 pixels and has a fairly low refresh rate, so it can appear slow and jerky as you move the camera to follow the action.

The overall performance is not impressive. The camera takes a slow four seconds to boot up to the point where it’s ready to shoot and over 3 seconds to shut down again as the lens retracts quite slowly. The AF system is about average, taking around a second to lock on in most lighting conditions, although the lack of an AF illuminator limits its usefulness in low light.

In burst mode, it can take about one picture every second and a half, which isn’t too bad for a budget camera, and it can maintain that rate until the memory card is full. At maximum resolution and image quality, the L5 produces JPEG files averaging around 2.2MB, which is very small for a 7MP camera, but means a 1GB SD card will do around 282 images, or 11 minutes 36 seconds of video material is sufficient for the highest quality setting.

The built-in flash is nice and powerful, with a maximum range of 5.5m wide-angle and excellent frame coverage, but it takes a long time to charge between shots, often over eight seconds.

As I mentioned before, the L5 is very short on features. It doesn’t have a manual ISO setting, just an automatic adjustment with a maximum of ISO 400. Unfortunately, the maximum setting is very noisy, and as there’s no way to stop the camera from selecting it, it means some low-light photos are very poor quality.

Of course, there are no manual exposure settings, but the L5 has 15 scene program settings including all the standards such as portrait, landscape, sports, night scene, beach/snow, dusk/dawn, sunset and more. There are no surprises, but there are enough choices to handle most shooting situations.

Color customization is also limited to the basic defaults, with a vibrant high-saturation mode, sepia, monochrome, and the blue-toned cyanotype option. White balance and flash modes also cover all the usual bases as detailed in the feature table on page 4. There is a manual preset option for white balance.

The only two special features are the VR image stabilization (Vibration Reduction) and the face recognition system. I have to say I wasn’t particularly impressed with the VR. Most optical or CCD Shift IS systems offer about 2 stops of extra stability when shooting at low shutter speeds, but I found the VR system to be very inconsistent and shots that were just a stop below the recommended minimum speed in hand were held, were often blurred. It doesn’t appear to be as effective as similar systems used by Canon or Panasonic.

Face ID, as I mentioned earlier, is more of a gimmick than a really useful feature. While the Nikon system is as good as any, it only recognizes faces looking directly at the camera, and even then, things like large sunglasses, wide-brimmed hats, and strong sidelights can confuse it. It’s really only useful for basic portraiture, and even then it doesn’t make much difference to standard AF and metering systems. It’s certainly very clever technology, but certainly not worth paying extra for.

Finally, moving to image quality, and this is where the L5 falls badly. As I mentioned earlier, even the maximum quality setting produces very small and heavily compressed image files, severely limiting image quality. In addition, the lens is not one of Nikon’s best, as it produces very noticeable barrel distortion at wide angle with very poor edge and corner sharpness. While color rendition and exposure were generally accurate, the level of fine detail was much lower than most 6MP compact cameras I’ve tested. One has to wonder what exactly is the point of putting a powerful 7.2 megapixel sensor in a camera crippled by poor noise reduction, high compression and an inferior lens.

“‘Verdict”‘

The Nikon CoolPix L5 is something of a mixed bag. It offers a decent zoom range and resolution, ease of use and ease of use, but its slow performance, clunky appearance, and poor image quality are major drawbacks. There are better cameras for not much more money.

“There are no ISO test shots for this test because the CoolPix L5 doesn’t have manual ISO control. Some of these images can be downloaded in full size. Click on the images as directed.”

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With a wide-angle end equivalent to 38mm, the L5 isn’t great for panoramic landscapes, but it does have panoramic stitching capability.

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The telephoto end of the 5x optical zoom range is 190mm, which is pretty handy for capturing distant detail but falls short of superzoom standards.

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Color reproduction and exposure are good in normal lighting conditions.

“Here, the full-size image has been scaled down for bandwidth reasons, and a crop of the original full-resolution image has been placed underneath so you can appreciate the overall quality.”

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Here is a shot of the front of Exeter Cathedral, my favorite shot for detail comparison. Below is a full-resolution crop of the center of this image.

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Compare the level of detail in this shot to similar images I’ve taken with other cameras to see how the L5 performs. For this shot, the camera’s light meter selected 79 ISO. I’ve seen better detail from six-megapixel compact cameras, largely due to the L5’s high compression JPEG files.

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Although it’s only equivalent to 38mm, the wide-angle end of the zoom range creates significant barrel distortion.

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This image is cropped from the top right corner of the previous shot. As you can see, the corner sharpness is very poor.

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