Customer Rating: 
Summary: Too many features for what I wanted
Comment: I returned this camera not because anything was wrong with it, but because it had too many features for what I wanted. The shutter lag was a bit slow, and I wanted a point-and-shoot that I could carry everywhere and whip out of my bag at a moment's notice. I was also a Canon and Olympus user before and had never had a Nikon. I chose to buy the Canon PowerShot SD1000 instead and am very happy now.
Customer Rating:
Summary: So far so good.
Comment: I bought this camera right before going on vacation. I owned an old Nikon Coolpix 5000 and I was already familiar with most of the features. It worked well on the trip and the battery lasted quite a long time. I had three batteries with me (they are very inexpensive) and I normally lasted a couple of days just on one battery.
I won't go into great detail on the features but I will talk about one I used most often on my trip. It was the Panorama feature. It allows you to align your camera in such a way that taking panoramic pictures is relatively easy... even without a tripod or a bubble level.
The way it works is you set the camera to panoramic mode then take the first picture. The LCD screen will display the edge of the last image so that you can align it up for the next shot. This works very good if you are stitching together 3-4 images but beyond that you may end up needing a tripod and/or a bubble level. Creating a full 360 degree panorama is child's play after that.
Not only can the panorama feature work horizontal but can create vertical panoramas as well. You can tell the camera what direction you want to move next and it will show you the proper alignment. So if you wanted to create one "big" image from 9 images using a 3x3 alignment it is very easy to do.
The camera comes with Arcsoft Panorama maker version 3 which will stitch the images together for you. It works well and I decided to upgrade to the 4.0 version but I liked 3 better though because it seems to do a better job of making interactive panoramas in Apple Quicktime (another very cool feature). Photoshop can do the same thing but I found that Arcsoft ran faster and it did not eat up as much memory.
I posted three panoramic images I took on vacation. See the Product images associated with this product to see them. They are MUCH smaller than the real output.
The camera works with the new SDHC cards. I bought a Kingston 8GB card and will probably never need another card again. Saving images in the highest resolution is very fast. Somewhere between 1-2 seconds.
The biggest downside I personally found is the inability to save in a RAW format. RAW format is an unprocessed/uncompressed image that are very useful with using in Photoshop. It gives the most detail and information for Photoshop to work with. My older Coolpix 5000 did not originally have it but Nikon put out a software upgrade for the camera that gave it RAW format capability. I am hoping they will do the same for the p5000 but so far no dice.
Overall I really like this camera and am glad I purchased it. I was going to go for a DSLR but I decided that I did not want to learn something new while on vacation.
Customer Rating:
Summary: Excellent for a Point and Shoot. Remember it isn't a SLR
Comment: I bought this camera to give me something smaller to carry when I couldn't carry my Nikon D80. I really like the VR and the fact that I can use my Nikon flash units.
After about 500 shots with the P5000 I am very happy with it but one must realize that it is NOT a SLR and there are some cases when you miss a shot because of that. Viewing a zoomed scene through the P5000 LCD can be very difficult in conditions except for very bright light. It is hard to see what you are going to get. With a SLR, you have no doubt.
The other difference is the lag time in the shutter. It is almost useless in fast moving sport action. For example I was shooting the grand children on a Bungee Jump where they bounce on a trampoline and then bungee into the air about 20 feet while wearing a harness. With the rangefinder camera, the action of the shutter does not keep up with the motion. By the time the shutter reacts to your finger press on the button, the child is not in the frame. The lag time is not fast. With my D80, you get exactly what you see in the viewfinder because there is almost no lag time for the shutter to open.
Overall, I give this camera FIVE Stars because it does VERY WELL what it was designed to do and it is very easy to hold and operate. It is NOT a DLR but was not designed to be one.
Customer Rating:
Summary: Not a great camera - Average at best
Comment: I had the opportunity to try out this camera for a few days before returning it. Let me preface this by saying I am a Nikon fanatic with several Nikon cameras and a D200 dSLR. I have turned to the canon G7, though, as my point and shoot and thought I would try out the Nikon P5000 when it arraived at my local camera shop. I returned it a few days later and stuck with the G7 (see my review there for positives for the G7)
The Nikon P5000 disappoints almost across the board. The look and build quality is that of the old Nikon 7900 model. It feels small and somewhat clumsy, although it appears sturdily built. It comes with a neckstrap and not a hand strap, kind of odd for a small light camera like this.
The setup is easy, but limited. There are a few dedicated buttons for functions across the left rear of the camera, but most of them point to View options rather than shooting options. The G7 dedicated buttons and dials are far superior here.
Day shots in bright sunlight are wonderful - exactly what you expect from Nikon. But indoor shots and flash shots become very problematic. High ISO is virtually unusable due to the noise created by the in-camera processing. The flash is extremely slow -- I haven't seen shutter lag like this since the early canon models. It even puts the Nikon P3/P4 models way above this (supposedly) higher level camera.
I found shutter priority to be almost unusable - without cranking up the ISO, all you get are black shots. WIth higher ISO all you get is noise. Aperture priority didn't create enough depth of field to see any significant difference. Do your own test -- line up three coffee cans about a foot apart on a counter - then try to focus on the back, the middle and the front coffee can and shoot for depth of field. With the G7 you get some nice blur toward the back, with the P5000 all shots are the same -- i.e. depth of field remains constant at the full-panoramic focus range. No artsy shots possible here.
Where this camera excels is in day shots in sunlight under Auto settings. These produce good, crisp shots of stationary objects. But almost all point and shoots should produce those types of results.
Movie mode is unusable -- the image does not remain steady (something the g7 does wonderfully) and the motor noise is so loud that it overpowers all real-life sound. Try your own test on that one -- the motor is just incredibly noisy.
Finally -- ONE BIG WARNING -- this camera, while aimed at the more advance enthusiast, is terrible at capturing action -- exactly the type of thing many dSLR users will want in lieu of dragging along their larger cameras -- In other words, if you want photos of your squirming kids at Walt Disney World, or your dog running around the backyard, or your son hitting the whiffle ball off the T in that first little league game, your NOT GOING TO GET IT with this camera. By the time the autofocus kicks in, and the shutter activates, the lag is so horrendous that you will never get those action family shots you want.
Your usage will of course vary depending on your own personal shooting style. For me, it gave me a nice form-factor camera, from a company I would love to support more, with exactly none of the features that I would need in a small point and shoot rather than my dSLR. I stuck with the Canon G7 and returned this. If you want to stick with Nikon, their best cameras remain the P3/P4 models if you can find them.
ADDENDUM August 30, 2007 -- Nikon today announced an update to this camera, called the P5100, which will be available in late September. If you are at all contemplating this camera, wait a few weeks for the newer version -- specs are basically the same with supposedly improved high ISO and increased pixel size.
Customer Rating:
Summary: Nikon Coolpix P5000 - good, but not as good as expected.
Comment: I wanted to update my Coolpix 7600 because of 2 issues: slow shutterspeed and poor low-light shots (better flash). The P5000 was not a major improvement in these areas. A perk that I like with my old 7600 is the fact that I can copy pictures taken by other cameras and move to the memory card of the 7600 to make prints. The P5000 does not have this capability. Other than that, it is a good camera. It requires a special battery where the 7600 still uses AA batteries. I do not notice a difference in picture quality. Overall, I will keep this camera for when my 7600 calls it quits because it has the optical viewfinder which is a must in my books and this camerea enables you to crop and save your pictures on the camera which my 7600 does as well (the Canon S3 does not have this feature). Size is small enough to carry around and overall a good camera if you don't mind the slow shutter speeds and less than perfect low-light condition pictures.
Summary: Too many features for what I wanted
Comment: I returned this camera not because anything was wrong with it, but because it had too many features for what I wanted. The shutter lag was a bit slow, and I wanted a point-and-shoot that I could carry everywhere and whip out of my bag at a moment's notice. I was also a Canon and Olympus user before and had never had a Nikon. I chose to buy the Canon PowerShot SD1000 instead and am very happy now.
Customer Rating:
Summary: So far so good.
Comment: I bought this camera right before going on vacation. I owned an old Nikon Coolpix 5000 and I was already familiar with most of the features. It worked well on the trip and the battery lasted quite a long time. I had three batteries with me (they are very inexpensive) and I normally lasted a couple of days just on one battery.
I won't go into great detail on the features but I will talk about one I used most often on my trip. It was the Panorama feature. It allows you to align your camera in such a way that taking panoramic pictures is relatively easy... even without a tripod or a bubble level.
The way it works is you set the camera to panoramic mode then take the first picture. The LCD screen will display the edge of the last image so that you can align it up for the next shot. This works very good if you are stitching together 3-4 images but beyond that you may end up needing a tripod and/or a bubble level. Creating a full 360 degree panorama is child's play after that.
Not only can the panorama feature work horizontal but can create vertical panoramas as well. You can tell the camera what direction you want to move next and it will show you the proper alignment. So if you wanted to create one "big" image from 9 images using a 3x3 alignment it is very easy to do.
The camera comes with Arcsoft Panorama maker version 3 which will stitch the images together for you. It works well and I decided to upgrade to the 4.0 version but I liked 3 better though because it seems to do a better job of making interactive panoramas in Apple Quicktime (another very cool feature). Photoshop can do the same thing but I found that Arcsoft ran faster and it did not eat up as much memory.
I posted three panoramic images I took on vacation. See the Product images associated with this product to see them. They are MUCH smaller than the real output.
The camera works with the new SDHC cards. I bought a Kingston 8GB card and will probably never need another card again. Saving images in the highest resolution is very fast. Somewhere between 1-2 seconds.
The biggest downside I personally found is the inability to save in a RAW format. RAW format is an unprocessed/uncompressed image that are very useful with using in Photoshop. It gives the most detail and information for Photoshop to work with. My older Coolpix 5000 did not originally have it but Nikon put out a software upgrade for the camera that gave it RAW format capability. I am hoping they will do the same for the p5000 but so far no dice.
Overall I really like this camera and am glad I purchased it. I was going to go for a DSLR but I decided that I did not want to learn something new while on vacation.
Customer Rating:
Summary: Excellent for a Point and Shoot. Remember it isn't a SLR
Comment: I bought this camera to give me something smaller to carry when I couldn't carry my Nikon D80. I really like the VR and the fact that I can use my Nikon flash units.
After about 500 shots with the P5000 I am very happy with it but one must realize that it is NOT a SLR and there are some cases when you miss a shot because of that. Viewing a zoomed scene through the P5000 LCD can be very difficult in conditions except for very bright light. It is hard to see what you are going to get. With a SLR, you have no doubt.
The other difference is the lag time in the shutter. It is almost useless in fast moving sport action. For example I was shooting the grand children on a Bungee Jump where they bounce on a trampoline and then bungee into the air about 20 feet while wearing a harness. With the rangefinder camera, the action of the shutter does not keep up with the motion. By the time the shutter reacts to your finger press on the button, the child is not in the frame. The lag time is not fast. With my D80, you get exactly what you see in the viewfinder because there is almost no lag time for the shutter to open.
Overall, I give this camera FIVE Stars because it does VERY WELL what it was designed to do and it is very easy to hold and operate. It is NOT a DLR but was not designed to be one.
Customer Rating:
Summary: Not a great camera - Average at best
Comment: I had the opportunity to try out this camera for a few days before returning it. Let me preface this by saying I am a Nikon fanatic with several Nikon cameras and a D200 dSLR. I have turned to the canon G7, though, as my point and shoot and thought I would try out the Nikon P5000 when it arraived at my local camera shop. I returned it a few days later and stuck with the G7 (see my review there for positives for the G7)
The Nikon P5000 disappoints almost across the board. The look and build quality is that of the old Nikon 7900 model. It feels small and somewhat clumsy, although it appears sturdily built. It comes with a neckstrap and not a hand strap, kind of odd for a small light camera like this.
The setup is easy, but limited. There are a few dedicated buttons for functions across the left rear of the camera, but most of them point to View options rather than shooting options. The G7 dedicated buttons and dials are far superior here.
Day shots in bright sunlight are wonderful - exactly what you expect from Nikon. But indoor shots and flash shots become very problematic. High ISO is virtually unusable due to the noise created by the in-camera processing. The flash is extremely slow -- I haven't seen shutter lag like this since the early canon models. It even puts the Nikon P3/P4 models way above this (supposedly) higher level camera.
I found shutter priority to be almost unusable - without cranking up the ISO, all you get are black shots. WIth higher ISO all you get is noise. Aperture priority didn't create enough depth of field to see any significant difference. Do your own test -- line up three coffee cans about a foot apart on a counter - then try to focus on the back, the middle and the front coffee can and shoot for depth of field. With the G7 you get some nice blur toward the back, with the P5000 all shots are the same -- i.e. depth of field remains constant at the full-panoramic focus range. No artsy shots possible here.
Where this camera excels is in day shots in sunlight under Auto settings. These produce good, crisp shots of stationary objects. But almost all point and shoots should produce those types of results.
Movie mode is unusable -- the image does not remain steady (something the g7 does wonderfully) and the motor noise is so loud that it overpowers all real-life sound. Try your own test on that one -- the motor is just incredibly noisy.
Finally -- ONE BIG WARNING -- this camera, while aimed at the more advance enthusiast, is terrible at capturing action -- exactly the type of thing many dSLR users will want in lieu of dragging along their larger cameras -- In other words, if you want photos of your squirming kids at Walt Disney World, or your dog running around the backyard, or your son hitting the whiffle ball off the T in that first little league game, your NOT GOING TO GET IT with this camera. By the time the autofocus kicks in, and the shutter activates, the lag is so horrendous that you will never get those action family shots you want.
Your usage will of course vary depending on your own personal shooting style. For me, it gave me a nice form-factor camera, from a company I would love to support more, with exactly none of the features that I would need in a small point and shoot rather than my dSLR. I stuck with the Canon G7 and returned this. If you want to stick with Nikon, their best cameras remain the P3/P4 models if you can find them.
ADDENDUM August 30, 2007 -- Nikon today announced an update to this camera, called the P5100, which will be available in late September. If you are at all contemplating this camera, wait a few weeks for the newer version -- specs are basically the same with supposedly improved high ISO and increased pixel size.
Customer Rating:
Summary: Nikon Coolpix P5000 - good, but not as good as expected.
Comment: I wanted to update my Coolpix 7600 because of 2 issues: slow shutterspeed and poor low-light shots (better flash). The P5000 was not a major improvement in these areas. A perk that I like with my old 7600 is the fact that I can copy pictures taken by other cameras and move to the memory card of the 7600 to make prints. The P5000 does not have this capability. Other than that, it is a good camera. It requires a special battery where the 7600 still uses AA batteries. I do not notice a difference in picture quality. Overall, I will keep this camera for when my 7600 calls it quits because it has the optical viewfinder which is a must in my books and this camerea enables you to crop and save your pictures on the camera which my 7600 does as well (the Canon S3 does not have this feature). Size is small enough to carry around and overall a good camera if you don't mind the slow shutter speeds and less than perfect low-light condition pictures.
Nikon Coolpix P5000 10MP Digital Camera with 3.5x Optical Vibration Reduction Zoom Reviews: Page 2 of 8
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