Nikon COOLPIX L18 Digital Camera - Good Decision When We Didn't Know Which To Buy

There are many reasons to add a digital camera to a household. It gives the ability to capture many special moments in an instant, and share with family and friends world wide.  Though my husband and I have an older, heavier digital camera, our 8 year old son has been asking for one of his own for a while now. After debating how much of a "real" camera to get and how much of a "kids" camera to get, we settled on the Nikon COOLPIX L18 Digital Camera in a very vibrant and metallic red. 

We felt that this camera could be used by the adults in the household as well to capture special moments, as well as be a nice introduction to our son on how to capture moments.  He is 8 1/2 years old and in the 3rd grade.  He has used digital cameras owned by other family members that were similar to this with ease. He is also very, very technology smart and seems to figure out electronics with an ease that frightens me. 

We picked the Nikon COOLPIX L18 Digital Camerain part for how it looked. It was a way cool red color and very stylish we felt for a young boy. Also since it was so bright it would be easily found! (or so we hoped)  We also felt that this camera was lightweight and not very sophisticated. We didn't need to take precise photos (though that would have been nice)  and we knew it would be handled by a child.  But we wanted it still to take somewhat quality photos and to be used at many occasions.  We were attracted to the fact that there were limited buttons on the camera itself. It seemed easy to turn on and off, and it was basically a "point and shoot" type of camera.  It seemed to do a lot of the adjusting and focusing features for you.

The manufacturer claims includes 8 megapixels. This provides us with, I feel, very clear pictures and allows us some additional features if we need to enlarge, modify or crop the picture.   The camera also boasts an "Easy Auto Mode."  This means the camera, in this mode, takes care of the aperture, shutter-speed, and ISO sensitivity so that all you have to concentrate on is taking the shot! 

The Nikon COOLPIX L18 Digital Camera also boasts a Anti-shake AE image stabilization, which means that it helps the camera stabilize the image and picture so what you are taking a picture of comes out clearer! This includes trying to steady your hand (something difficult often for an 8 year old to do!) and trying to shoot a picture of a moving around person (which happens daily as he has 2 sisters ages 3 and 16 months that are often the subject of his snapshots - as well as the family dog!)

To view the scene as you are taking the picture, this camera features a Bright High Resolution 3.0-inch LCD. This is a pretty large viewing screen and makes the picture taking even easier. You can really see alot through it and can get a wide variety of objects and background if needed.  This may be an issue for those used to looking through a small viewer (you know the kind where you often had to close one eye!), but for us (and in particular for our son) having the LCD screen makes it even easier to find success taking the picture!  The Scene Modes include: Dusk/Dawn, Beach/Snow, Landscape, Party, Portrait,
Close Up, Night Landscape, Sports, Museum, Sunset and Night Portrait.

The camera also has a 3x Zoom-Nikkor lens. The lens works automatically with the touch of a button. It is easy to zoom in close or to widen out, and the the button just requires the user to push on it to the left or right.  This is another feature our has no difficulty with.  The lens has always performed for us, and you can audibly hear it as it moves into position. 

The Nikon COOLPIX L18 Digital Camera has what I think is a pretty neat feature, one I haven't had on a camera before. It has Face-priority AF, which means it automatically finds and focuses on a subject's face. You notice this as the LCD screen will show a small box in your viewing area around the subjects face, and the box moves as the person moves around some and tries to get into focus. The camera also has In-Camera Red-Eye Fix (which detects and corrects red eye in a photo) and D-Lighting  (which compensates for excessive backlight or dark images).

The camera uses 2 AA batteries, which I find an easy way to allow our son to charge and use. There is no camera charger.  I am not sure how we feel about that (so far we don't feel strongly one way or another) but I am glad that if the camera needs charging all I have to do is pop in another set of batteries.  The claims from the company are that Alkaline batteries last for 180 shots and NiMH for 300 shots. (we use the latter)  The internal memory holds approx. 23MB - so we bought a memory card to go with this camera.  The memory card and battery storage are in the same bottom compartment of the camera, which is odd but takes up less space.

One of my son's favorite features is the Record TV-quality movies with sound, and is one of the main reasons we purchased this particular camera. He really wanted one he could record short videos on. He thought it would be easier to have this feature on his camera rather than pulling out his recorder every time he wanted to make a small movie. The movies actually record really well (for family use) and he's made tons of them so far.  They have great sound quality and the overall picture quality is well too. Most times our subjects are kids and pets so the subjects aren't very still or complaint, but they are still fun to watch back.  This camera also comes with a Video Cable to be able to plug into a TV and such and watch the videos/view the pictures. There's one other cable, the USB cable, to allow the camera to hook up to the computer to transfer pictures. (it comes with related software as well)

We overall are very, very satisfied with what we got for $100.00.  We feel that this is a good family camera for our needs and easily used by a responsible child. The Nikon COOLPIX L18 Digital Camera was just what we were looking for.