A New Hobby for Photography: Nikon Coolpix L820.

I was made aware of this camera, by YouTube User Lmull3 / Luke Muller who replaced his Philips CAM110 Pocket Camcorder as a result of a shot battery. And he enjoyed his Nikon L820. And for the price, it's a solid point and shoot camera with only the Focus being the noticeable complaint. It has 30x Optical Zoom which is so much better than all my phones / cameras which all rely on digital zoom for long range shots. It's not the best among the Nikon Coolpix series, but it'll still be a whole lot better than the Galaxy S4 that I use.

Impressions:

Impressions on this camera were promising and for the last 2 months, I've been having a blast with it. Ever since my fellow Music aficionados / Biker Besties from Holy Fam got me into photography as a hobby, rather than a professional, this has been my primary camera.

L820: 30x 16MP Nikkor Lens 16 MP.
Two ways to operate the T/W Zooms: One around the shutter switch for your right hand or the T/W Rocker next to the
Lens for your left hand whichever way you prefer.

It works with both Windows and Macintosh (both of which are easy to grab photoes from). On the windows you can simply go to the DCIM folder and drag the photos out as you normally would from a Thumbdrive. Macintosh would require you to use the iPhoto to get these out but you can choose to import whichever ones you want and you can see the preview of your library of photos at one glance. The importing to Macintosh rather than windows is my preferred one.

It comes with a generous 65 Megs of Memory, which is enough for a dozen 16MP Max Quality Shots, 33 8MP Shots and up to a minute of 720p Video.

The camera does have some heft to it but it's not heavy. Its grip is solidly grippy enough to hold one-handed. Auto-Focus is a bit iffy as said by LMull3, but I normally prefer to switch to a dedicated mode for a much better focus. And the Flash helps that.... A LOT.

Sample Photographs:

Now below are some photos that I did since getting it. And I did want to test how much I can push the camera. Just on Sunday 26th July 2015, one of my uncles came by to do an in-house wedding photoshoot at home. So while Dad was using one of the big boys, the Nikon D7000 DSLR that he has as a primary camera, I was using this. My uncle gladly obliged to do my own set to see how it goes. Now how it stacked up against each other was surprisingly admirably quite close to a DSLR quality camera even for a sub 150 SGD Camera.

The Flickr Album for the Wedding photoshoot:
https://www.flickr.com/photos/48826150@N08/sets/72157654041679363

Now I am not, at any stretch, a professional photographer and you all know me as a musician. So any tips on how to improve my shots are welcomed. That said my uncle was surprised how good even the shots from the L820 turned out.

Meanwhile enjoy some of the photos.

Patio Shot

Shot of the Table which had some of the things the camera was shipped with: The Black Pouch, Proprietary USB Cable,
mini HDMI to Composite, 3100mAH AA Batteries from Xit, (4 in the Camera, 2 in reserve) 

Kitchen Shot

Shot from my Bedroom.

Singapore Esplanade Lighting: Taken during one of my Mahler 8th Rehearsals with the Vocal Associates
And the Orchestra of the Music Makers. That was by far probably my best shot till date.

Panoramic shot from my standing position.

Full Moon shot with the Lens Optically Zoomed in at 30X

Superzoom: Close Up Mode = 30X Optical + 30X Digital is about 60X Zoom.