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Photographer Gordon Laing lately dusted off his outdated Nikon Coolpix 300 to see how nicely it has aged. Initially launched in 1996, it may shoot 0.3-megapixel images and provided the weird potential to take notes or draw with the touchscreen. The Coolpix 300 is a smartphone-shaped digicam that shipped with some uncommon options, particularly for the late Nineties: a pill pen and a reasonably giant rear LCD that allowed photographers to attract or take notes on images captured. It additionally allowed for recording voice memos, however the drawing performance was notably distinctive on the time. “You may faucet the display utilizing your finger with average success, however it’s greatest to make use of the provided stylus which is saved contained in the gadget and extends to be used,” Laing writes. Laing notes that the rear 2.5-inch touchscreen, which is protected by a sliding cowl, is the primary that he can recall on any digital digicam. It additionally allowed for a real-time live-view feed of what the digicam was pointed at with 100% protection. “Throughout overview you’ll be able to draw on the picture and or report an audio clip in case you like. Playback is just a little convoluted. Relatively than pushing the triangle we’re used to at this time you needed to enter the menus, faucet playback, spotlight the gadgets you need to view, then faucet enter within the nook,” Laing reviews. “Throughout playback you can too draw on photographs in inexperienced, pink or blue and all annotations are saved individually so the picture could be seen with or with out them.”
The entrance of the digicam encompasses a one-third-inch CCD sensor behind a 45mm f/4 equal lens that gives a paltry 0.3-megapixels, which is simply 640×640 pixels. The sensitivity was fastened at ISO 100 and auto-exposure works with a variety of 1/30 and 1/2500 second. Laing says that the Coolpix 300 looks like a digicam forward of its time, arriving on the beginning of client digital pictures and digital planners. Nikon finally dumped the Coolpix 300 only a yr later in 1997 because it moved in direction of what would beocome the way more profitable Coolpix 900 which concentrated extra on the core strengths of pictures and digicam ergonomics, Laing says.
Nonetheless, Nikon’s providing introduced options that have been discovered within the Palm Pilot which was launched the identical yr, however lacked the full-color show discovered on the Nikon digicam. In that sense, the Coolpix was nicely forward of its time and, as Laing places it, downright progressive. Learn Laing’s full Retro Evaluation of the Nikon Coolpix 300 on CameraLabs, the place he goes into extra element on the digicam, the way it operates, and the way photographers received images off the weird gadget.
Picture credit: Pictures by Gordon Laing and used with permission.
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