Photo Club

Few will argue that Nikon’s DSLRs are among the most esteemed digital cameras available; however, the prevailing sentiment among photo enthusiasts is that the compact Nikon digicams often pale in comparison to their bigger siblings. All that’s about to change with the introduction of the shirt-pocket sized Nikon Coolpix P50 ($160, street), an 8.1-megapixel image-making dynamo.

The Coolpix P50 is nearly the size of Nikon’s flagship point-and-shoot, the Coolpix P5100, yet has none of the gizmos, fluff, and confounding extras that get in the way of everyday shooting. There are no WiFi features, complex button schemes to learn or even a hot shoe. What you’ve got instead with the P50 is a stripped-down hotrod of a camera for the casual snapshooter or budget-minded enthusiast.

Sure, you give up some high-end control for the cost, such as RAW capture and full manual exposure, but we’re OK with that at this price. Nikon is more than generous with shutter speeds though, having a full range from 8 seconds to 1/1000th of a second available and an ISO range of 64 to 2000. It is clear though that Nikon’s intent is to make the P50 a utilitarian image-producing machine.