Nikon Coolpix A Review

March 22, 2013 | Mark Goldstein | Rating star Rating star Rating star Rating star

Introduction

The Nikon Coolpix A is a new premium compact camera aimed firmly at the keen enthusiast photographer. The Nikon A has exactly the same DX-format 16.2-megapixel CMOS sensor as the Nikon D7000 DSLR but with no optical low-pass filter for maximum sharpness. There's also a 28mm fixed focal length lens with a maximum aperture of f/2.8, sensitivity range of ISO 100 to 25600, full range of creative PASM shooting modes, Full 1080p HD video recording with stereo sound, a burst mode of 4 continuous shots per second, a 3-inch 920,000-dot LCD screen and an optional optical viewfinder (DF-CP1). The Nikon Coolpix A is available in black or silver for £999.99 / $1099.95 / €1199.00.

Ease of Use

The Nikon Coolpix A is the most advanced and most expensive Nikon compact camera to date, offering a proven DSLR sensor and similar user interface in a small and well-made body - indeed, this is the smallest camera with an APS-C sensor currently on the market. You can easily carry the Coolpix A around in a trouser or shirt pocket, as it measures 111.0 x 64.3 x 40.3 mm and weighs less than 300g with the battery and memory card fitted, which isn't that much larger than the Nikon P330 or Sony CyberShot RX100 compacts. It's also crucially quite a lot smaller and lighter than one of its main rivals, the Fujifilm X100S, although that camera does offer a built-in optical/hybrid viewfinder that's a very expensive optional extra on the Coolpix A, not to mention a faster f/2 lens.

The Coolpix A has a fixed lens with a wide-angle focal length of 28mm, which is plenty wide enough for sweeping landscapes and street photography. The lens has a maximum aperture of f/2.8 at the wide-angle setting, which when paired with the Coolpix APS-C sensor creates some nicely blurred backgrounds but is perhaps a little slower than expected. The Coolpix A doesn't have an anti-shake system, although with such a wide lens and very good results at higher ISOs, we didn't really miss it.

The Coolpix A feels very solidly constructed yet at the same time pleasingly lightweight, encased in a tough aluminum alloy with a top surface covered by magnesium alloy. It definitely has a very high level of build quality that befits its premium price. There's no flex in the chassis and all of the controls have a DSLR-like feel to them. We wish that the shooting mode dial was lockable, as it frequently go knocked out of position when stored in a pocket, but otherwise everything feels bullet-proof.

Nikon Coolpix A Nikon Coolpix A
Front Rear

On the front of the Coolpix A is the 28mm lens complete with manual focusing ring and a filter ring that accepts a lens hood or 46mm filters. Top-left of the lens is a single bulb which doubles-up as the self timer and the Coolpix AF assist lamp, flanked by holes for the stereo sound. Also on the front of the Coolpix A is a small but helpful vertical leatherette strip that acts as a handgrip for your right hand, with just enough room for three fingers. Used in conjunction with the similarly textured thumb-grip on the rear, it allows you to get a secure grip the camera and be able to confidently use it one-handed. The Function button is a customisable button that can be set to one of 11 key camera settings. Over to the right of the lens is a circular window for the optional infrared remote receiver. Completing the front of the Coolpix A is a gold DX logo that proudly hints at the camera's sensor size.

The Coolpix A has a small and neat built-in flash, activated by a switch on the rear of the camera, which pops-up above-right of the lens and therefore provides a little more clearance and less chance of unwanted red-eye in your photos. We found that the built-in flash unit was fine for a bit of fill-in, with respectably quick recycle times and adequate range. Also located on top of the Coolpix A is an external hotshoe for an optional flashgun, should you require a more powerful Speedlight than the built-in unit.

Next to this is a Shooting mode dial that's very similar to what you'd find on a consumer-level DSLR. Ranged around this are settings for the Coolpix Auto, Program Auto, Shutter Priority, Aperture Priority and Manual modes, plus Scene modes and two U options, which stands for User Settings. This allows you to access a saved menu settings configuration, allowing you to quickly swap between the camera's current settings and a preconfigured one.

Nikon Coolpix A Nikon Coolpix A
Pop-up Flash Side

The Coolpix A has a slightly springy shutter button, with the camera taking about 1/4 second to determine focus and exposure but with no discernible shutter delay thereafter. The contrast-based auto-focus system is respectable enough for a compact camera but certainly not as quick as the Fujifilm X100S or Nikon's 1 series compact system cameras. This is surrounded by a lever for turning the camera on and off, with a green LED briefly lighting up to signify the power is indeed on. Give it a press and the Coolpix A powers up very quickly in around 1/2 second, the lens barrel extending to the 28mm setting and the rear LCD blinking into life.

Maximum resolution JPEGS are stored by the Nikon Coolpix A in three seconds. In continuous shooting mode it can capture 4 frames per second for up to 26 Large sized, Normal quality JPEGs. As you'd expect the Coolpix A supports the RAW file format as 14-bit uncompressed .NEF files, complete with in-camera processing.

Completing the Coolpix A's top-plate is a large, unmarked, thumb-operated dial for setting the shutter speed when the shooting mode is set to Shutter Speed Priority or Manual, or alternatively for setting the exposure compensation. We'd have welcomed the ability to customise its use, though - it would be nice to be able to set the aperture this way, for example, as the navigation wheel on the rear that does change this setting has a nice action but isn't as intuitive for anyone who has used a DSLR before. Still, dual controls for setting the aperture and shutter speed is very rare on any compact, so kudos to Nikon for including both on the Coolpix A.

Nikon Coolpix A Nikon Coolpix A
Front Top

The rear of the Coolpix A has a 3-inch LCD screen with an impressively high 921,000-dot resolution, providing more than enough detail for you to be able to determine whether you have a sufficiently crisp image. Directly above are tiny autofocus and flash recycling lamps. To the left is a vertical row of four buttons which in turn set the exposure compensation, ISO speed (this button can also be customised to suit), and two buttons for zooming in and out of an image during review or digitally increasing and decreasing the focus magnification in either auto or manual focus mode. There's also a clever in-camera virtual horizon that displays the horizontal inclination on the LCD monitor, useful for ensuring that your landscape shots are straight.

Over to the right of the LCD screen are self-explanatory buttons for image playback and the menu system, which is very DSLR-like and clear and easy to navigate. Press this when in any of the shooting modes and there are three menus, Playback, Shooting, Setup, Retouch and Recent Settings. Irritatingly there's no external button for controlling the screen display, just a menu option, and more seriously there's no one-touch Movie Record button, with the Movie recording option inexplicably buried away within the Release menu.

The Nikon Coolpix A can record full 1080p, 1920x1080 pixel HD movies at 30fps with stereo sound. It also offers a 720p mode at 1280x720 pixels (30 fps). Movies can be played back on a HDTV via the built-in HDMI connector, although as usual there's no suitable cable supplied in the box. The Coolpix A supports the CEC feature for HDMI which enables playback control using your TV's remote control. You can change the aperture and shutter speed before shooting a movie, but not during, and you can only manually focus before the movie starts, which rules out direct control of more creative effects.

In playback mode, Coolpix A offers a broad range of retouching tools, including post-capture D-lighting (useful if you forgot to turn on Active D-lighting before capture), red-eye correction, trimming, monochrome conversion, different filter effects, colour adjustments, image resizing, image overlay, in-camera raw processing, quick auto retouching, straightening of crooked pictures, lens distortion correction, perspective control (reduction of keystoning), and fisheye, miniature, colour outline and colour sketch effects. Many of these functions make it unnecessary to buy specialised computer programs or plug-ins and spend hours in front of a computer to achieve a desired/popular effect. Interval timer shooting is a powerful feature and something that isn't offered by the Coolpix A's rivals.

Nikon Coolpix A Nikon Coolpix A
Memory Card Slot Battery Compartment

Underneath is the circular scroll wheel with an 'OK' button at its centre. The circular wheel is a feature that has been "inspired", shall we say, by some of Nikon's main rivals. As previously mentioned, this is principally used to set the aperture, forming an intuitive partnership with the thumb-controlled dial, as well as moving the single AF point around the frame and performing the more mundane tasks of moving through menus and selecting options.

At the bottom right of the rear of the Coolpix A are two buttons. The most interesting is the "i" button, which is arguably at the heart of the Nikon Coolpix A's ease-of-use. It lets you quickly check and change vital shooting information, displaying virtually all of the camera's main settings on the large rear screen, with 14 available in total. Used in conjunction with the two customisable Function buttons, it's possible to quickly access almost all of the camera's key settings, although we did miss having a thumb-operated AE/AF Lock button on the rear. The button to the right features the familiar trashcan icon for deleting images on the fly and completes the rear of the Coolpix A.

As far as connectivity goes, there is a Mini HDMI ports on the right-hand side of the camera when viewed from the back., and connections for a GPS unit/wired remote control and USB 2.0 cable on the left, all sheltered behind two sturdy plastic doors. Completing the Coolpix A's external controls is a handy switch for setting the focus mode, with AF, Macro and MF options on offer. The focus range is 50 cm (1 ft 8 in.) - infinity in the AF mode, and 10 cm (4 in.) - infinity in the macro autofocus mode, so if you want to get closer to your subject than 50cm and still be able to auto-focus, you have to remember to select the Macro mode first.

On either side of the camera are metal eyelets for attaching the supplied shoulder strap. The bottom of the Coolpix A houses an EN-EL20 Rechargeable Li-ion battery that's only good for around 230 shots, an SD card slot, holes for the monaural speaker and a metal tripod mount that's a little off-centre from the middle of the lens.

Image Quality

All of the sample images in this review were taken using the 16.2 megapixel Fine JPEG setting, which gives an average image size of around 7Mb.

The Nikon Coolpix A produced images of outstanding quality during the review period. The Coolpix A produces noise-free JPEG images at ISO 100-1600, with ISO 3200 also looking pretty good. ISO 6400 only shows a little noise, while the fastest settings of ISO 12800 and 25600 are quite a lot noisier and suffer from softening of fine detail and a loss of saturation, but the images are still perfectly usable for small prints and resizing for web use.

The images were a little soft straight out of the Coolpix A at the default sharpening setting and ideally require some further sharpening in an application like Adobe Photoshop, or you can change the in-camera setting for JPEG files. The night photograph was good, with the maximum shutter speed of 8 seconds allowing you to capture enough light in most situations. Red-eye was not a common occurrence with the built-in flash, and when we did encounter it, it was very moderate and easily cured by setting the flash to red-eye reduction mode. Active D-lighting managed to squeeze most of the dynamic range captured by the sensor into the JPEGs the camera produced.

Noise

The Nikon Coolpix A has 9 sensitivity settings ranging from ISO 100 to ISO 25600 (Hi2) at full resolution.

JPEG RAW

ISO 100 (100% Crop)

ISO 100 (100% Crop)

   

ISO 200 (100% Crop)

ISO 200 (100% Crop)

   

ISO 400 (100% Crop)

ISO 400 (100% Crop)

   

ISO 800 (100% Crop)

ISO 800 (100% Crop)

   

ISO 1600 (100% Crop)

ISO 1600 (100% Crop)

   

ISO 3200 (100% Crop)

ISO 3200 (100% Crop)

   

ISO 6400 (100% Crop)

ISO 6400 (100% Crop)

   

ISO 12800 (100% Crop)

ISO 12800 (100% Crop)

   

ISO 25600 (100% Crop)

ISO 25600 (100% Crop)

Focal Range

The Nikon Coolpix A's fixed lens provides a focal length of 28mm in 35mm terms, as demonstrated below.

28mm

Sharpening

Here are two 100% crops - the right-hand image has had some sharpening applied in Photoshop. The out-of-the camera images are slightly soft at the default sharpening setting and benefit from some further sharpening in a program like Adobe Photoshop. You can alternatively change the in-camera sharpening level to suit your tastes.

Original (100% Crop)

Sharpened (100% Crop)

   

File Quality

At full resolution, there are three JPEG quality settings available - Fine, Normal and Basic - and you can also shoot in the RAW format.

Fine (5.45Mb) (100% Crop)

Normal (4.17Mb) (100% Crop)

   

Basic (1.39Mb) (100% Crop)

Raw (16Mb) (100% Crop)

Chromatic Aberrations

The Nikon Coolpix A shows little purple fringing, with very limited effects in areas of high contrast as shown in the examples below.

Chromatic Aberrations 1 (100% Crop)

Chromatic Aberrations 2 (100% Crop)

Macro

The Nikon Coolpix A allows you to get as close as 10cms to your subject, in this case a Compact Flash card.

Macro

Macro (100% Crop)

Flash

The flash settings on the Nikon Coolpix A are Auto, Auto with Red-eye reduction, Slow Sync with Red-eye reduction, Slow Sync, Rear-curtain Sync and Flash Off. These shots of a white coloured wall were taken at a distance of 1.5m. Some vignetting and barrel distortion is apparent at the 28mm wide-angle setting, irrespective of whether you use the flash or not.

Flash Off

Auto

ISO 64 ISO 64

And here are a couple of portrait shots. As you can see, neither the Auto or the Auto with Red-eye reduction options caused any amount of red-eye.

Auto

Auto (100% Crop)
   

Red-eye Reduction

Red-eye Reduction (100% Crop)

Night

The Nikon Coolpix A's maximum shutter speed is 30 seconds in the Manual mode with a Bulb mode for even longer exposures, which is excellent news if you're seriously interested in night photography. The shot below was taken using a shutter speed of 25 seconds at ISO 100.

Night

Night (100% Crop)

Active D-Lighting

D-lighting is Nikon's dynamic range optimisation tool that attempts to squeeze the full dynamic range of the sensor into JPEGs. The available settings are Off, Low, Medium, High, Extra High and Auto. The following examples demonstrate the differences between the various settings.

Off

Low
   

Normal

High

   

Extra High

 
 

Picture Controls

The Nikon Coolpix A has six different Picture Controls, which can be individually tweaked (sharpening, contrast and saturation) to suit your taste.

Standard

Neutral
   

Vivid

Monochrome

   

Portrait

Landscape

Sample Images

This is a selection of sample images from the Nikon Coolpix A camera, which were all taken using the 16.2 megapixel Fine JPEG setting. The thumbnails below link to the full-sized versions, which have not been altered in any way.

Sample RAW Images

The Nikon Coolpix A enables users to capture RAW and JPEG format files. We've provided some Nikon RAW (NRW) samples for you to download (thumbnail images shown below are not 100% representative).

Sample Movie & Video

This is a sample movie at the highest quality setting of 1920x1080 pixels at 30 frames per second. Please note that this 21 second movie is 53.2Mb in size.

Product Images

Nikon Coolpix A

Front of the Camera

 
Nikon Coolpix A

Front of the Camera / Pop-up Flash

 
Nikon Coolpix A

Isometric View

 
Nikon Coolpix A

Isometric View

 
Nikon Coolpix A

Isometric View

 
Nikon Coolpix A

Isometric View

 
Nikon Coolpix A

Rear of the Camera

 
Nikon Coolpix A

Rear of the Camera / Image Displayed

 
Nikon Coolpix A

Rear of the Camera / Turned On

 

Nikon Coolpix A

Rear of the Camera / Playback Menu

 
Nikon Coolpix A

Rear of the Camera / Shooting Menu

 
Nikon Coolpix A

Rear of the Camera / Setup Menu

 
Nikon Coolpix A

Rear of the Camera / Retouch Menu

 
Nikon Coolpix A

Rear of the Camera / Recent Settings Menu

 
Nikon Coolpix A

Rear of the Camera / Info Screen

 
Nikon Coolpix A

Top of the Camera

 
Nikon Coolpix A

Bottom of the Camera

 
Nikon Coolpix A

Side of the Camera

 
Nikon Coolpix A

Side of the Camera

 
Nikon Coolpix A

Front of the Camera

 
Nikon Coolpix A

Front of the Camera

 
Nikon Coolpix A

Memory Card Slot

 
Nikon Coolpix A

Battery Compartment

Conclusion

The Nikon Coolpix A is an assured entry into the growing premium compact camera market, boasting an attractive combination of a proven APS-C sensor, quality 28mm optic and a small and compact body. Slightly sluggish auto-focus speed, a "slow" f/2.8 lens, the price of the optional viewfinder, no one-touch movie button, and perhaps more crucially for Nikon, the outstanding Fujifilm X100S prevent us from recommending the Coolpix A more highly.

Coming on like a Coolpix P330 on steroids, the Coolpix A's star turn is definitely the 16.2 megapixel sensor borrowed from the last-generation D7000 DSLR. There's virtually no noise from the base sensitivity of ISO 100 all the way up to 3200, with the higher settings of 6400, 12,800 and even to a lesser extent 25,600 all perfectly usable for smaller prints - very impressive for any 1.5x sensor, never mind one housed in a compact camera. The sharp 28mm lens and the lack of an optical low-pass filter both help to offer stellar image quality. Exposure, colour and white balance were all uniformly reliable, with the option of the RAW format if you want to take control. Only the lack of any control over noise reduction using the ViewNX 2 RAW editing software supplied in the box detracts slightly from an otherwise impeccable performance.

The Coolpix A's handling is also good, again inheriting features from Nikon's DSLR range, such as the twin control dials, two customisable Function buttons, dual User shooting modes and the handy Info button for quick access to key settings. Thankfully the LCD screen is more than adequate for image composition in even bright light, important given the rather exorbitant cost of the optional optical viewfinder. While we miss but can live without a dedicated AE Lock button, the contrast-based AF system is more of a deal-breaker. It's not so much slow, just not as fast as the Fujifilm X100S - indeed, it feels on par with the original X100 with the latest firmware upgrade installed. We had the pleasure of testing both the X100S and the Coolpix A at the same time, with the former a clear winner in the speed stakes.

Which leaves the Coolpix A in something of a quandary - smaller and more pocketable than its rivals, but with slower auto-focusing and no built-in viewfinder. It's definitely an interesting camera in its own right that would make a great second camera for Nikon DSLR owners, but ultimately a few crucial shortcomings and some fierce competition limit its appeal to a wider audience.

4 stars

Ratings (out of 5)
Design 4.5
Features 4
Ease-of-use 4
Image quality 5
Value for money 4

Review Roundup

Reviews of the Nikon Coolpix A from around the web.

neocamera.com »

The Nikon Coolpix A is a compact digital camera with an APS-C sensor, the same sized used in most DSLRs. This combination of small camera-size and big sensor-size is quite impressive. The sensor itself is a 16 megapixels CMOS sensor without Anti-Alias filter to deliver maximum sharpness from the bright F/2.8 prime 28mm-equivalent lens built into the Coolpix A.
Read the full review »

Specifications

Effective pixels 16.2 million
Image sensor 23.6 x 15.6 mm Nikon DX format CMOS; approx. 16.93 million total pixels
Lens NIKKOR lens (7 elements in 5 groups)
Focal length 18.5 mm (angle of view equivalent to that of 28 mm lens in 35mm [135] format)
Maximum aperture f/2.8
Autofocus (AF) Contrast-detect AF
Focus range Approx. 50 cm (1 ft 8 in.) - infinity; approx. 10 cm (4 in.) - infinity in macro autofocus mode. All distances measured from center of front surface of lens
Focus-area selection Face-priority, normal area, wide area and subject-tracking AF
Monitor 7.5 cm/3-in., approx. 921k-dot, TFT LCD with a wide viewing angle, anti-reflection coating, and 9-level brightness adjustment
Frame coverage Approx. 100% horizontal and vertical (compared to actual picture)
Media SD/SDHC/SDXC memory cards
File system DCF, Exif 2.3, DPOF, and PictBridge compliant
File formats Still pictures: JPEG, RAW (NEF; a proprietary Nikon format)
Movie recording: MOV (Video: H.264/MPEG-4 AVC, Audio: Linear stereo PCM)
Image size (pixels) Still pictures: L (4928 x 3264), M (3696 x 2448), S (2464 x 1632)
Movie recording: 1920 x 1080 pixels (30p/25p/24p), 1280 x 720 pixels (30p/25p/24p)
ISO sensitivity (Recommended Exposure Index) ISO 100 - 3200; can be adjusted using ISO sensitivity to 6400, Hi 0.3 (ISO 8000 equivalent), Hi 0.7 (ISO 10000 equivalent), Hi 1 (ISO 12800 equivalent), and Hi 2 (ISO 25600 equivalent)
Metering mode Matrix, center-weighted, or spot
Exposure control Auto, scene, programmed auto with flexible program, shutter-priority auto, aperture-priority auto, manual with exposure bracketing and exposure compensation (±5 EV [photos] or ±2 EV [movies] in steps of 1/3 EV), U1 (user settings 1), U2 (user settings 2)
Shutter Mechanical and CMOS electronic shutter
Speed 1/2000 to 30 s; bulb and time available in mode M (time requires optional ML-L3 remote control)
Aperture Electronically-controlled 7-blade iris diaphragm
Range 19 steps of 1/3 EV
Self-timer Choose from durations of approx. 20, 10, 5 and 2 seconds
Range Approx. 0.5 - 11.5 m/1 ft 8 in. - 37 ft (mode, auto ISO)
Flash control TTL auto flash with monitor pre-flashes; manual flash control available; Guide Number approx. 6/21, or 6/22 when fired in manual mode at full power (ISO 100, m/ft, 23°C/73.4°F)
Flash compensation -3 - +1 EV in steps of 1/3 EV
Accessory shoe ISO 518 hot-shoe with sync and data contacts and safety lock
Interface Hi-Speed USB
Data transfer protocol PTP
HDMI output Auto, 480p, 576p, 720p, 1080i
I/O terminals
  • Digital connector (USB)
  • HDMI mini connector (Type C)
  • Accessory terminal
Supported languages Arabic, Chinese (Simplified and Traditional), Czech, Danish, Dutch, English, Finnish, French, German, Indonesian, Italian, Japanese, Korean, Norwegian, Polish, European Portuguese, Russian, Spanish, Swedish, Thai, Turkish
Power sources
  • One EN-EL20 Rechargeable Li-ion battery (supplied)
  • EH-5b AC Adapter; requires EP-5C Power Connector (available separately)
Battery life Still pictures: approx. 230 shots with EN-EL20
Movie recording (endurance for movie recording)*2: approx. 1 hour and 10 minutes with EN-EL20
Tripod socket 1/4 (ISO 1222)
Dimensions (W x H x D) Approx. 111.0 x 64.3 x 40.3 mm (4.4 x 2.6 x 1.6 in.) excluding projections
Weight Approx. 299 g (10.6 oz), including battery and memory card
Temperature 0°C - 40°C (32°F - 104°F)
Humidity 85% or less (no condensation)
Supplied accessories EN-EL20 Rechargeable Li-ion battery, MH-27 Battery Charger, UC-E16 USB Cable, Camera Strap, BS-1 Accessory Shoe Cover, ViewNX 2 CD-ROM

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