Assault on batteries
When it comes to power-consumption, the most catastrophic quirk is the camera’s failure to automatically power down until four hours have elapsed! By then, AA alkaline batteries are toast and even rechargeables will be too weak to leave home without a good juicing. Three times I was faced with dead batteries after downloading images and failing to turn the camera off when I was done (Of course, an AC adapter-a $70 option-would have averted this problem. It’s a shame one wasn’t included). I have never before encountered a camera that didn’t power down inside of a minute or two.
I was disappointed that the $999 C-3030 did not come with rechargeable batteries (a $35 option) and a charger, as do even the less-expensive Epson PhotoPC cameras. I was unable to find replacements for the camera’s odd “paired” disposable lithium batteries at either my local camera shop or Radio Shack. I sprang instead for a rechargeable NiMH battery kit.
Exorcise your options
Heavy dependence on the menu — and thus the LCD screen — exacerbates the drain on battery life. Menu functions are easily accessed with compass-point directional buttons above the LCD screen, but getting to some functions is like raising the dead. With the exception of the flash mode and macro settings, all the C-3030’s functions-even exposure compensation, which you would typically adjust while in the throes of shooting-require menu navigation. By contrast, the CoolPix 990 lets you adjust exposure with a function button near the shutter.
The digital zoom function is buried too far down the menu tree to be useful. I had to press 10 buttons each time I wanted to go beyond the C-3030’s 3x optical zoom and invoke the 2.5x digital zoom. By contrast, the Nikon CoolPix 990’s 4x digital zoom kicks in when you hold the optical zoom button for an additional two seconds. That’s a much more intuitive way to use the zoom feature.
Another deeply interred function is the image-resolution selection menu. While the C-3030 offers a wide array of image-quality options (anywhere from 1 to 165 images can be stored on the included 16-MB SmartMedia), exhuming your choices can require more than 20 pushes of a button! Even after reading the manual three times I found that I could never remember the necessary steps once I was out in the field. Nor did I want to use up battery power wading through long menus. Consequently I shot almost all my pictures in the default mode. Nikon’s CoolPix 990 offers a much more practical implementation: an Image Quality button that cycles through all the options on the LCD.
This article was last modified on January 6, 2023
This article was first published on May 5, 2000
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