Nikon Coolpix 2500: Handy 2-Megapixel Point-and-Shoot with Cool Design

Sean Wagstaff

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The point-and-shoot digital camera market is awash with me-too competitors, few of which have anything new or unusual to offer. Today’s standard fare includes a 2-megapixel CCD, a 2x- or 3x- optical zoom, and Compact Flash or SmartMedia memory expansion. Almost every camera on the market comes with image cataloging software, and some combination of editing and effects utilities.

If measured against this checklist, the Coolpix 2500 (street price around $350) is unremarkable. What sets it apart from the crowd, however, is unique design in both its physical format, and its operating firmware. For artists and designers who need a simple on-the-go snapshot camera for collecting reference material, documenting work, or capturing special moments, it’s an excellent choice.

Pocket Ready
The Coolpix 2500 has one of the nicest, most compact designs we’ve encountered. Its oblong shape fits neatly in a shirt pocket or purse, and rounded corners and minimal weight make it easy to forget you’re carrying it. The size and shape make it a comfortable fit, even in big hands. The silver-and-cool-blue color combination doesn’t hurt, either.

The most striking aspect of the design is a pivoting lens compartment (an idea borrowed from earlier, more costly Coolpix cameras but better implemented here) that lets you shoot forward normally, or to reverse the lens, which allows you to aim the camera at yourself and friends while still viewing the LCD viewfinder to compose a shot (see figure 2). When the lens is rotated to the vertical, non-shooting position, the outer bezel of the camera doubles as a lens cover. The 3x Nikon optical zoom on this camera has no external moving parts that can be infiltrated by dirt, an important consideration in a camera that’s likely to spend much of its time in a pocket or at the bottom of a hand bag. Like other cameras, it also has an optical zoom feature, but this is a gimmick that’s rarely worth using.

One interesting change in the Coolpix’s design is that Nikon has dumped the optical viewfinder altogether. It’s about time, since the tiny optical viewfinders on other digital cameras in this class are basically useless space wasters.

Another small, but significant refinement: The combination battery-and-memory compartment door is much sturdier than the flimsy plastic flaps found on many digital cameras.

Like other point-and-shoot cameras, the Coolpix has a tiny front flash mounted right next to the lens. This typically results in indoor portraits with very unflattering front lighting, and vampirish redeye; the alternative is to use the redeye flash mode which produces startled expressions and squints caused by the red-eye-reducing preflash. We’ve yet to see a point-and-shoot camera that didn’t have this problem, so you might as well expect it, and hope you’ll do most of your picture taking in existing light.

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