Nikon Coolpix 950

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Coolpix 950

The Nikon Coolpix 950 and Nikon Coolpix 990 are digital cameras whose bodies are in two parts so that the LCD viewing screen may swivel with respect to the lens and conventional viewfinder. They were introduced by the Nikon Corporation in 2000. They can be used for point-and-shoot, but have manual overrides for most settings.

One part of the body houses the controls, batteries, viewing screen, a small secondary LCD screen on top for settings display, the memory card and the tripod bushing. The other part carries the lens, image sensor, focus sensor, flash and viewfinder. The body shell is an alloy casting.

The shutter-release button is surrounded by the off/Auto/M/play switch; in front of this on the 950 is a finger-wheel for manual adjustments; this wheel moves to the top back edge on the 990. On the back, behind the shutter-release are two buttons for zooming in and out, falling under the thumb. Above the screen are buttons for turning the monitor screen on/off, and a menu button; below the screen are buttons labelled delete/+/-, Mode and Qual.

The 950 has a rubbery cover on the top-front, underneath which are the video and power connectors. The 990 has the power connector on the front - again under a rubbery cover, and the video & USB connectors on the end.

Technically these are excellent cameras. Both have internal-focus, internal-zoom lenses, and close-focus to less than 1 inch. Nikon lens quality was very closely watched at this stage of their digital evolution, as they stated that they would not allow their reputation to fall by outsourcing or producing inferior-quality optics. One of the really advanced features for the time was shutter speeds and aperture values which were virtually continuously-variable. It would be normal for the camera to expose an image at a value such as f/3.1 for 1/643 of a second. Here you can again see the Nikon devotion to the quality of the image.

DPReview reports that the CCD in these cameras were four-colour CMYK. Rear LCD was of the glossy (rather than anti-glare) type and were much better for accurately viewing images. Filter ring is 28mm, polarizers were available. Accessory lenses mount on the filter threads, and not only were of very high optical quality, did not reduce the amount of light entering the camera. Of particular note, the Nikon 3x add-on lense is of ED glass quality.

	990	950
Announced:	27th January 2000	1999
Lens:	Zoom-Nikkor, 8-24mm, f2.5-4 38-115mm equivalent	Zoom-Nikkor, 38-115mm equivalent
Storage:	CompactFlash cards	CompactFlash cards
Resolution:	3.1 megapixels (2048 x 1536)	2 megapixels (1600 x 1200)
ISO settings	80, 100, 160, 320	80, 100, 200, 400

External link

• Removing the IR Blocking Filter in the Nikon 950 and 990, subtitled "or How to Ruin Your New Camera"

• Review of Nikon Coolpix 950 on ePHOTOzine

Nikon Cameras