The Nikon Coolpix P500 is the best superzoom camera for individuals who require the broadest conceivable focal length range in the most compact body. Supplanting the P100 which offered a simple 26x zoom, it prods in front of its main rival, the PowerShot SX30 IS, by prudence of offering a colossal 36x optical reach (to the Canon’s ‘pitiful’ 35x). Going with this mammoth zoom is a 12.1 megapixel back enlightened CMOS sensor, which ought to hypothetically give more prominent low light viability.
Key Features:
- 36x long range focal point (35 mm same: 22.5-810mm)
- 12.1Mp CMOS picture sensor
- 3in 921,000 dots, tiltable LCD screen
- HDMI connector for the result to an HDTV.
- 7x anti-blur
- Side zoom control
- Full (1080p) HD film recording with sound system sound
- Simple Panorama 360°/180°
- Exposure Modes (P/S/A/M)
- Rapid nonstop shooting (8fps) at full 12.1-megapixel resolution
Handling
Thanks to the grip where your right hand holds the camera, the camera is not difficult to haul around when not being used as well as being agreeable to utilize while shooting. The slide switch for the optical zoom is helpful yet handily thumped while shooting portraits so care should be taken.
Tipping the scales at 494 grams, the Nikon Coolpix P500 is marginally heavier than the P100, however, its plan is just insignificantly unique. Like most very good quality superzooms, the Nikon P500 has the common extension camera look, with a thick hand-hold, enormous focal point barrel, spring up streak and an eye-level electronic viewfinder. The profound hold is shaped to fit easily into your right hand and is rubberised for added solace.
Continuous L shooting mode takes five regular 12.1Mp pictures at 8fps and 24 pictures at 1.8 fps utilizing Continuous H. For much more fps you can shoot 25 2Mp pictures at 60fps and 50 1Mp pictures at 120fps.
Lens
The other predominant piece of the P500 is obviously the 36x long range focal point, which goes from a super-wide 22.5mm to a gigantic 810mm in 35mm terms. Taking into account that with an SLR, you would require somewhere around 3-4 focal points to cover a similar central reach, the single, fixed-mount focal point of the Nikon P500 can be portrayed as surprisingly smaller, regardless of whether it expands a lot when zoomed to full fax. Superzooms have gained notoriety for having a high “fun component”, and the P500 is the same.
The capacity to rapidly go from wide point to ultra-fax is something that must be experienced to be fully appreciated. It surely provides you with a sort of opportunity you feel with no other kind of camera.
However long you make sure to eliminate the lens cap, the camera takes under two seconds to prepare after switching on. If you leave the focal point cap on the camera makes a great deal of commotion and displays a blunder message. This implies you need to eliminate the focal point cap to see pictures you have taken. (Note: Apparently when the camera is turned off you need to press and hold the play button and the camera changes to audit mode without requiring the focal point cap to be eliminated).
For its size, the P500’s focal point is additionally honourably quick, with the greatest openings of f/3.4 at 22.5mm and f/5.7 at 810mm. Note that the focal point cap must be eliminated before turning on the camera – neglecting to do as such will bring about a blunder message being shown, and you’ll need to switch off the camera before you can turn it on once more, which is a piece irritating. Even though you just need to survey what’s as of now on the card, you can likewise turn on the P500 by holding down the Playback button, in which case the focal point will not broaden.
Vibration Reduction
Fortunately, Nikon has included Vibration Reduction (VR) to assist with forestalling camera-shake, a fundamental component on a camera like this. Strangely, while VR is the focal point situated in the Nikon SLR framework, it is of the sensor-shift assortment in the P500. Vibration Reduction has a perceptible effect on the sharpness of the pictures, as displayed in the models on the Image Quality page.
You can hear a slight mechanical buzzing clamour when it is turned on, however, if not you don’t see it, then again, you can utilize more slow shade speeds than typical yet take sharp photographs. Tragically, there is anything but a committed button to turn VR on and off – yet essentially leaving it on didn’t appear to contrarily influence the battery duration, with the camera overseeing around 220 shots utilizing the provided Li-particle battery. It’s as yet smart to switch VR off (using the menu) when the camera is mounted on a stand, in case the actual framework cause obscuring by attempting to counter camera shake that isn’t there.
Zoom
Zooming is finished via a regular zoom switch that circles the shade discharge button sitting on the right-hand grasp. It is of the double speed assortment: pivoting it as far as possible in either course will change the central length rapidly, while turning it to some degree will make the focal point components move slower, empowering you to set the ideal central length all the more definitively.
Then you can zoom utilizing the creative side zoom control on the focal point barrel, which is an upward rocker switch initiated with your left hand. It has a more slow activity than the fundamental zoom switch and is along these lines fit to shooting video when you require a more steady zoom with less mechanical commotion.
Electronic View-Finder
There are two unique approaches to forming pictures with the Nikon Coolpix P500: you can utilize either the eye-level electronic viewfinder (EVF) or the back screen. Tragically, there are no eye closeness sensors that would permit the camera to flip between the two naturally – you want to press a button each time you need that to occur.
The EVF is a lowland standard issue with 230,000 dots and normal amplification; not a big deal, particularly in 2011. The three-inch back LCD screen is a lot more pleasant to check out, on account of its high resolution of 921,000 dots. Much more significantly, it’s enunciated and ready to shift up or down, offering you some additional adaptability in making your chances. However, a genuinely free-point LCD, which can likewise be pivoted out aside, would have been considerably more pleasant.
Layout and Controls
The layout and number of outer controls haven’t changed much from the P100. You get a customary, top-mounted mode dial with P, A, S and M shooting modes – ideal for the photographic artist who needs to take full control. There is additionally a User (U) setting you can use to rapidly recover a mix of your most often utilized settings. The shade discharge, zoom switch and power button are basically in similar areas as on the P100, joined by another button for nonstop shooting.
In the Backlighting mode, the P500 catches three continuous shots at different exposures and consolidates them into a single photograph with a more extensive scope of tones. Three distinct HDR settings are accessible for choice. At the point when the Night Landscape scene mode is chosen, the P500 goes after a quick screen speed and afterwards joins them to make a single advanced photograph, permitting you to shoot into the evening without utilizing a tripod.
The Easy Panorama scene mode permits you to take vertical or even display photographs basically by moving the camera toward the on-screen guides. Numerous shots are then joined into a single display photograph. The point of view can be chosen from 180° (ordinary) and 360° (wide).
The back controls are additionally spread out in basically the same manner as those of the previous model. There is an all-around situated control wheel in the upper right corner (when seen from the back), which makes it simple to change the gap and screen speed in An and S modes individually, yet there’s still no second dial on the hand-hold which would have made working Manual mode a lot more straightforward.
The comfortable multi-selector with its focused OK button seems indistinguishable from the P100, down to the singular capacities that are planned onto the Up, Down, Left and Right fastens. These incorporate the blaze and centre modes, exposure compensation, and the self-timer. There is still no easy route key to ISO speed, which is just available from the menu (as is white equilibrium); a significant plan imperfection as we would like to think.
Modes
The P500’s focus modes incorporate AF, Macro, Infinity and Manual. AF can be focus spot, client selectable from 99 focus points or camera selectable from 9 points. In Face Priority AF mode, the camera can recognize up to 12 human faces and will zero in on the one nearest to the camera. We viewed that as paying little heed to AF region mode, auto-centre speed was palatable for still subjects, yet excessively delayed for quick ones.
Manual focusing is likewise conceivable, however a bit awkward: you get a simple distance scale on the right-hand side of the screen and can change centre through the Up and Down buttons. The focal point of the image is amplified to help you with actually taking a look at concentrate, however tragically this is accomplished via interjection rather than genuine amplification. The entire cycle is quite sluggish, yet can in any case be a gift from heaven when the auto-focus framework fires misbehaving.
Outside of the Scene Auto Selector, there are 15 other scene modes like Landscape and Portrait as well as another Pet Portrait mode and two display modes: Easy and Panorama Assist. The last option utilizes a phantom picture on the screen to assist you with arranging your progressive photographs. The previous simply expects you to press the shutter and pan the camera left, right, up, or down to make a display in the camera.
These modes never handle movement well, so they’re best involved in the landscape without movement in it. Like most cameras with BSI CMOS sensors, the P500 has multishot modes for further developing low-light photographs of scenes and pictures. At a single press of the shutter release, the camera takes a few photographs and afterwards consolidates them to further develop obscure from handshake and decrease noise and the right exposure. The Night Landscape mode is effective, however not generally so great as others I’ve tried. The Night Portrait mode makes efforts with and without glimmer and consolidates them into well-uncovered shots. Be that as it may, on account of the idea of how these pictures are created, these modes can’t be utilized with moving subjects.
If you like to shoot close-ups, the P500 has a couple of ways of entering Macro mode. It will naturally change to it if you’re utilizing the Scene Auto Selector mode. You can likewise choose a Close-up mode from the camera’s Scene choices. Furthermore, if you’re in PSAM, you can change to a large scale centre through the control cushion. You can concentrate as close as 0.4 inches from your subject assuming that you broaden the focal point some (there’s an onscreen marker to let you know where to quit zooming), at the focal point’s greatest position, it focuses 4 inches from a subject.
Flash
The glimmer of the Nikon P500 must be pop-up manually, utilizing the button on the fake pentaprism lodging. You can set the blaze mode to auto, auto with red-eye decrease, fill, slow sync and raise shade sync using the Up button on the multi-regulator, yet just when the glimmer is raised. As there is no hot-shoe or sync terminal on the Nikon Coolpix P500, and it doesn’t offer remote TTL streak control either, the best way to match up an outside flashgun with the camera is to optically slave it to the inherent unit.
The P500 can shoot full-resolution stills at up to 8 edges each second (fps), somewhat more slowly than its ancestor. Accessible via the new persistent shooting button on top of the camera, this quick burst mode is called Continuous H. Unfortunately, the camera can’t keep up this speed for a long time, as the support tops off after only 5 shots. At the end of the day, you a little the greater part a second in Continuous H mode.
Fortunately, there is additionally a more slow burst mode, called Continuous L, in which the casing rate drops to 2.5fps, yet you can catch up to 200 full-goal photographs at the Normal quality setting. Note that you can’t involve the glimmer in any of the ceaseless shooting modes. The P500 doesn’t uphold the RAW record design, something that every one of its fundamental rivals offers, and a prosumer include that honestly, we’d expect on this class of camera.
Movies
The P500 can shoot Full HD (1920×1080-pixel) films at 30 edges each second, with sound system sound and full utilization of the optical zoom. It likewise offers a 720p mode at 1280×720 pixels (30 fps) and VGA mode at 640×480 pixels (30 fps). Nikon’s savvy originators put the sound system amplifier on the highest point of the camera right behind the glimmer. A Wind Noise Reduction work is accessible in the Movie menu. Effectively limiting the noise of wind blowing on the receiver, it is prescribed to be turned on in solid breeze just, as it might likewise make different sounds challenging to hear. Sensor-shift VR isn’t accessible during film recording, however, you might select to turn on electronic picture adjustment.
The P500 is additionally prepared to do rapid (HS) film recording, but not at Full HD resolution. QVGA recordings can be shot at 240fps, VGA films at 120fps and HD (720p) cuts at 60fps. At the point when these recordings are played back at 30fps, they become sluggish movement motion pictures.
The greatest recording time per cut is restricted to 10 seconds in the HS video modes. Sound isn’t recorded and no type of VR is accessible. Given the high edge rates, these recordings require quick shade speeds, which implies that you want exceptionally splendid circumstances, particularly while taking shots at 240 casings each second. There is a shrewd film mode change up the Movie Record button that switches among HD and HS film recording. An exquisite and basic arrangement, albeit the boundaries, must be set utilizing the menu.
Recording film cuts are extremely kind with the Nikon P500 through the one-touch Movie Record button on the back of the camera. By squeezing this button, you can begin recording a clasp regardless of the shooting mode you are in. You can utilize the optical zoom while recording, and full-time AF is additionally accessible. Being used, we found that zooming in or out now and again made the picture go briefly out of concentration, yet the AF framework generally changed itself rapidly in these cases.
The greatest clasp length is restricted to 29 minutes. The Creative Slider and Special Effects can likewise be utilized while shooting motion pictures, and they can be played back on an HDTV using the implicit HDMI connector, as expected there’s no reasonable link provided in the crate. The P500 upholds the CEC include for HDMI which empowers playback control utilizing your TV’s controller.
Menu
The Nikon Coolpix P500’s recognizable Menu button gets to the typical Nikon menu framework, which is clear and simple to explore. Press this when in any of the shooting modes and there are three menus, Shooting, Movie and Settings, with two menus, Playback and Settings, accessible while you’re checking on a picture. A major oversight is the practically consistent need to involve the menu framework for setting the ISO speed, white balance, metering, and AF mode, with somewhere around 4 button presses expected to change these frequently utilized highlights. The P500 is painfully missing some sort of fast menu framework, open through an outer control, to help accelerate its overall activity.
The menu framework is easy to explore and the buttons are fine to press, even with huge fingers. As well as the run of the mill buttons found on the camera there is a devoted record button for films which additionally has a rocker to change from HD to HS (High speed). There is a button to change from the screen to the viewfinder, which can be changed by the diopter change control wheel. There is likewise a button to switch between the different persistent shooting modes.
In playback mode, squeezing a similar Menu button manages the cost of admittance to simple picture altering, including Nikon’s exposure changing D-Lighting capacity, Skin Softening and Filter Effects, picture slide shows, and the programmed Quick Retouch. A button to the right elements the recognizable garbage bin symbol for erasing pictures on the fly and finishes the back of the P500.
Battery and Slots
As indicated by Nikon/CIPA the battery is fit for 220 shots. During testing, there was no great explanation to speculate that this figure is over-assessed. 220 shots are very low for a compact so it is likely beneficial to put resources into an extra to heft around.
On the right flank of the camera – as yet seeing it from the back – there’s a metal eyelet for connecting the provided shoulder lash. On the left-hand flank are another eyelet and a plastic cover safeguarding the HDMI port and A/V out/USB port. There’s a halfway situated, metal stand mount on the lower part of the camera.
The P500 is fueled by an 1100 mAh lithium-particle battery, really great for around 240 shots, that spaces into the base close by the SD/SDHC/SDXC card opening. There is a little interior memory as well, yet it will just hold a couple of photographs at full goal, so you’ll require a memory card. Note that re-energizing the P500 is a fairly tangled issue, with the battery staying in the camera and requiring the battery cover to be shut.
Performance
The exhibition of the Nikon P500 is for the most part acceptable. It fires up in less than two seconds and zooms before long yet precisely for power zoom. As noted before, its AF speed isn’t the best, however, you’ll possibly see that while attempting to catch quick activity. We tracked down the fast ceaseless shooting mode splendid however unfortunately restricted by a little support.
The main disappointing plan imperfection is the absence of direct access to ISO speed and white equilibrium. We’d truly prefer to see committed buttons for these capacities. In Playback mode, the main remarkable eccentricity is the powerlessness to amplify into the picture from Histogram view – this is the kind of thing that should be not difficult to address through a firmware overhaul, albeit that never occurred for the P100.
Picture Quality
The Nikon Coolpix P500’s picture quality is great for a compact camera with a little picture sensor. The Nikon Coolpix P500’s managed genuinely well with commotion, which ends up being undeniable at ISO 400 alongside some shading misfortune. The commotion, shading desaturation and loss of detail deteriorate as you go from ISO 400 to ISO 1600 lastly the unusable 3200 settings.
The Nikon Coolpix P500 handled chromatic deviations astoundingly with restricted purple bordering impacts showing up just in high difference circumstances. The 12.2-megapixel pictures were a little delicate straight out of the camera at the default hone setting and either require some further honing in an application like Adobe Photoshop, or you should expand the in-camera honing level.
The Nikon Coolpix P500’s greatest screen speed is 8 seconds, which is genuinely uplifting news for night photography devotees. Full-scale performance is excellent, permitting you to concentrate as close as 3cms away from the subject. Vibration decrease is an extremely helpful element that functions admirably while hand-holding the camera in low-light circumstances or utilizing the fax end of the zoom range. The implicit blaze functioned admirably inside, with no red-eye and great by and large openness. The backdrop illumination include increments detail in both the shadows and features, although to the detriment of a few extra commotion and loss of fine detail.
The Nikon P500 can catch five full-resolution pictures at around 8 edges each second in a single burst. That is essentially as quickly as a very good quality advanced SLR, however, cradle profundity is very shallow. A portion of the opposition in this class can do up to 10 and, surprisingly, 40 frames each second, for reference.
Like those others, to be specific the Sony HX1 and Casio FH20, the Nikon P500 does a few different stunts with this rapid catchability. Isolated into discrete Scene modes on the Mode dial, these multi-shot modes catch a few pictures and join them into one to make up for troublesome lighting circumstances.
Backdrop illumination Scene mode, for instance, catches a few pictures at various screen paces to catch both the shadows and splendid features and union them to make a unique HDR (High-dynamic-range) picture just inside the camera; in all cases, I’ve attempted it, the camera has requested that I raise the glimmer before it would make the effort. Night Landscape mode is likewise more complex, catching up to five high shade speed pictures into one single picture and consolidating them into one, permitting a client to have a chance in low light that would regularly require a sluggish, non-handholdable screen speed.
The night portrait mode, which utilizes a glimmer (the camera demands), is additionally upgraded by the capture of isolated pictures, one with flash, the others without, to make a sufficiently bright picture that keeps up with the surrounding light in dim settings.
There’s likewise the new pre-catch mode, which utilizes the force of the CMOS sensor and processor to consistently catch pictures before you press the screen button; sadly, the Nikon P500 lessens the picture size to 2 megapixels in this mode. You can likewise settle on 120 casings each second at 1 megapixel or 60 edges each second at 2 megapixels. Old Nikon reserves like Best shot selector (BSS), Multi-shot 16, and the Interval clock are additionally important for the Nikon P500’s drive mode options.
Auto Panorama Modes
The double processors likewise take into consideration another stunt for Nikon: Easy Panorama. Instead of shooting a progression of painstakingly caught pictures and having them sewed in the camera or on a PC, the Nikon P500 permits you to catch either 180-degree or 360-degree all-encompassing pictures simply by squeezing the shade and clearing the camera over the picture region.
It’s really clear and appears to function admirably. When you press the screen button in this mode, the camera prompts you with a cross with four-bolt tips, letting you know that you can clear in any of four bearings: up, down, left or right. When you begin to move toward a path, the camera begins catching, and a little slider shows up on the lower part of the screen, demonstrating how much further you want to clear. Whenever it arrives at the end, the Nikon P500 begins to process and save the picture. It additionally works with the camera arranged upward.
The 180-degree scene choice ranges yield a 3,200×560-pixel picture, while 360-degree clears yield a 6,400×560-pixel picture. The controls on the P500 are on the whole very much named, generally enormous enough and fall promptly underneath the fingertip or thumb. The backplate resembles a cross between a minimal camera and a section level DSLR – which is a fair method for summarizing the P500 overall.
It gives both a back DSLR-like order dial for rapidly looking through selectable screen speeds in addition to a four-way control cushion with an ‘ok’ button at its middle for carrying out any progressions to menu settings, for which a committed menu button is set straightforwardly underneath. While we would have enjoyed a button for direct access to ISO options, we additionally get devoted erase, playback and show setting buttons – again essentially what you’d hope to find on any smaller camera. So those exchanging up from a simple to use preview camera won’t observe the P500 overwhelming with regards to everyday activity.
Press the P500’s on/off button, alluringly enlightened in green when dynamic and proceeding to ‘pulse’ when the camera is in rest mode, and the Nikon powers up in a little more than a second, back LCD squinting right away into life. Pair the focal point barrel bumps forward somewhat from its defensive lodging to show up at the most extreme wide-angle setting.
Crush the screen discharge traditional midway and the autofocus follows through with its task after the briefest of stops. Push down the button completely to make the effort and an entire 12 megapixels greatest JPEG is focused on memory in just shy of two seconds, which is quick by conservative camera guidelines. There’s no crude choice here, which could be an issue for some. We viewed the P500’s spotlight and exposure to be spot on if anything failed towards a slight underexposure to safeguard feature detail. Pictures are shockingly sharp also, being a counterpart for some, top-notch end compacts if the P500 doesn’t exactly have a similar broad list of capabilities as far as the imagination.
Sensor and Image Processing
The sensor in the P500 is a comparable illuminated CMOS chip to the one utilized in the P100 yet gives a higher resolution (12-megapixels rather than ten). Connected to the sensor is Nikon’s new EXPEED C2 picture processor, which supports an assortment of capacities.
As well as supporting HD video recording, VR picture adjustment and Active D-Lighting, the new processor incorporates calculations for rectifying a few normal distortions and noise decrease handling. It additionally upholds the multi-shot modes normal in cameras with illuminated sensors.
Another expansion to these modes is a Night Portrait mode that records shots with and without glimmer and joins them to create an even outcome. The Continuous H mode on the P500 upholds burst speeds up to eight, regular casings/second for five casings, while the Continuous L mode records at generally 1.8 fps for 24 edges.
The P500 gives two fast modes at diminished resolution. The 60 fps establishing can standard up to 25 shots at 2-megapixels, while the 120 fps mode records 50 casings at one-megapixel resolution. Time-slip by recording is likewise given periods seconds or one, five or 10 minutes.
Like its predecessor, the P500 is a JPEG-just camera, with 12 picture sizes and three pressure proportions selectable. Eight of the sizes are in 4:3 perspective proportion with two at 16:9 and one each at the 3:2 and 1:1 viewpoint settings.
Pros of Nikon Coolpix P500:
- Impressive zoom range
- Very good image quality
- Superb handling
- Excellent build quality
- Face Detection Focusing
- Hybrid image stabilization
- Full manual controls
Cons of Nikon Coolpix P500:
- No Environmental Sealing
- limited tonal range
FAQs
How old is the Nikon Coolpix P500?
Nikon Coolpix P500 is a great camera for ideal photography. This camera has been released in March 2011.
Is Nikon Coolpix P500 a DSLR?
The new Nikon Coolpix P500 has an extraordinary 36x optical zoom and it comes with a DSLR-like body.
Does Nikon Coolpix P500 shoot raw?
No, Nikon Coolpix P500 doesn’t support raw shooting.
Can you add lenses to Nikon Coolpix P500?
The 67mm Lens Adapter for Nikon Coolpix P500 Digital Cameras is an all-metal connector tube that replaces the lens ring on the camera. This connector will permit you to attach 67mm lenses and filters onto your Nikon COOLPIX P500 camera.
How long does it take to charge a Nikon Coolpix P500?
You can expect around 220 exposures for every charge, and charging time for a depleted battery requires around 4 hours and 50 minutes.
Final Words
The Coolpix P500 is packed with great features and delivers magnificent outcomes. Utilizing the camera at its biggest zoom will require practice, persistence, and a fully charged battery in your pocket, with a standing tripod to show its potentiality more effectively.