With the ever-evolving mobile image sensors for smartphone cameras, the future of entry-level compact cameras may seem to be in jeopardy. But Nikon has launched two new cameras, the COOLPIX A100 and B600, to restate all negative assumptions regarding the future of dedicated cameras.
While smartphone cameras are working ever so hard to come up with lenses with impressive resolutions, there’s only so much that can be done before compromising picture quality. And if there is one area where dedicated cameras surpass their smartphone counterparts by a significant margin, it is the optical zoom. For better optical zoom, bigger lenses are required, and although OPPO has achieved 10X hybrid zoom, it is nothing when compared to COOLPIX B600’s 60X optical zoom, expandable up to 120X with digital zoom.
Such an impressive zooming capacity allows the B600 to seamlessly cover wide-angle 24 mm shots and 1440 mm super-telephoto close-ups. And a side zoom control enables the device to zoom between the two ranges, even as one is recording a video. Besides this, a dial pre-equipped to provide camera conditions ideal for ten different shooting modes saves the photographer from wasting time fine-searching the settings.
The COOLPIX A1000, for its part, has a slightly less impressive 35x optical zoom. But on the bright side, it has been equipped with a 1166K-dot equivalent electronic viewfinder to frame accurate shots without glares or distractions. The camera can also shoot 4K UHD movies and photos in RAW (NRW) format.
Both the cameras have further been endowed with Nikon’s SnapBridge wireless technology to allow automatic transfer of photos from the camera to phones it has been paired with and allows simultaneous uploading of the same to the NIKON IMAGE SPACE photo sharing service. Details regarding the availability of the cameras remain to be announced.
