My First Nikon

It's not the D3S, not the D300S, not the D700, nor the D3000 & not even the D90! It's not a DSLR. In fact, it's not even a mid-range camera.
This is the Nikon Coolpix L20.

Yes, that's the cheapest Nikon camera anyone can buy... around $80. Actually, it has already been discontinued, so it’s only available on eBay.

The L20 is the base model in the entry-level point & shoot Nikon compact cameras (L standing for the Life series). This is the kind of camera you usually gift to someone who has no idea of how to take a picture...

After the USB Plasma Ball, the Nikon L20 is the second reward I have received from Rapidshare. Most of the points earned came from uploads of Top Gear. ;)
Last year, Rapidshare introduced a program where you could convert points to euros, paid via Paypal. For unknown reasons, they abruptly stopped the program this January (just at the time I had enough points to get a significant payout).
Fearing for the worst, I decided to redeem my points for rewards instead. On the 1^st of Feb, I converted my points for a camera & a 8GB SD card. A week later, the points for the camera were deducted, but those for the SD card still haven't been deducted (despite my repeated email inquiries). & 2 weeks ago, Rapidshare stopped the Rewards program.
Luckily since the points had already been deducted, I received my camera, but as for the 8GB card, I will probably never get it...
So if you are an uploader, or you're looking to buy/extend a premium account, be warned that Rapidshare are showing signs of going out of business...

Coming back to the camera, it took approximately 3 weeks for it to be shipped from Switzerland. I was summoned to pick it up today at the central post office & had to pay custom charges of around Rs 400 for the camera which was valued at around € 85 (Rs 3500).

The L20 is 10.1MP camera with a 3-inch LCD screen, 3.6x optical zoom, 84-1600 ISO, motion detection, Smile mode and 20MB of internal memory.

Like most basic compacts, the Nikon L20 runs on AA batteries, which is really a big annoyance. Not the battery life, but the charging times of the NiMH rechargeable batteries – 18 hours!!! & it was today itself that I discovered that my 4 AA rechargeables were dead…

There’s an Easy Auto Mode (for the n00bs), a Scene Mode with over 16 different modes including Panorama, a Smile Mode to take a pic when someone smiles, a Video Mode & the Auto Mode, which is actually the semi-manual mode.

Manual controls – nil. Everything (White balance, Colour, EV, Macro) is buried here & there in the pixelised menu. There is no ISO control – which totally sucks.
If I had to rate the UI of the camera, 3/10 would have been enough.

Since I didn’t have any SD card, it was a nice surprise to find out that my old 128MB MMC card was actually detected by the camera. Although, 128MB is barely enough – at 10MP, I had space for only 19 shots.

Advantages? I see only one... portability. The L20 is definitely more discrete, more pocketable & very light compared to DLSRs and other medium-range compacts.

Picture Quality

This was my first photo. There’s a large amount of noise, which can be attributed to the low light level.

This was a tricky one. One thing I’ve noticed is that the LCD display never really conveys the actual photo. The difference between what is seen & when the shot is taken is huge!

Testing the macro mode. Impressive focus. :)

Mr Blurrycam? Nope, this is just the zoom. Using zoom is an utter disaster. All photos taken with the optical zoom were blurry. Motion detection didn’t work at all! :|

To be honest, my first experience with the Nikon L20 has been quite unpleasant. Colours were bland. The amount of noise was incredible. Maybe it was the dusk. If it’s the firmware, I must add that Nikon haven’t released any firmware updates for the L20 – it’s still on 1.0. I haven’t tried the video mode & other scene modes, but I’m positive that I had a much better first-time experience with my previous camera. Certainly the pictures taken in the same low light conditions would have been better than those I took with L20.
Or maybe I’m just expecting too much from an entry-level compact camera…

The Bottom Line

The geek in me tells me that the Nikon L20 will never be good enough for me. But these last 1.5 years without a camera have been immensely tough. My first camera, the 2MP HP 635, was so utterly crap that I broke it. & I do regret it, because it was still better than my 0.9MP blurry phone camera, which I've been using till now.
For someone who can't afford a proper camera, the L20 is a godsend... Certainly, it's not a D90, but still, it's my first Nikon. :)

Update:

I was totally wrong about the L20! Check out the follow-up post: Nikon L20 - Day 2

PS. Did you catch me on l'Express? - http://twitpic.com/18s2fq