My situation was I brought my Sony to Florida and on the 2nd day, something happened, and the lense went out of focus. Went o some of the “same day repair” places down there to find out that it would be a min of $40 to look at it, and that situation would probably cost a min of $250.

At that point I started looking at what these shops had to offer and I came across this camera. I must admit at first I wanted to ignore it, thinking it was all hype over the great lens, and the wireless ability, but the more I looked at it, and thought about it, I started to get into it, and I will say the pictures it took after we bought it, were amazing.

I have some of the most clear pictures in the parks then I would have ever thought I would get. I would say this is probably the best purchase I have ever made, and even though I paid a little more for the camera then is posted here on amazon, I realize I was in a tourist trap, and he also threw in a 1gig high speed SD card for free…

Love the following:

1. Size of the display screen – Ahhmazing!

2. handy – small enough to fit comfortably in pockets/ handbags

3. Simple to use.

Some surprises and disappointments were

1. Never could get the Wi-fi to work

2. Flash pictures taken at night have some white spots – I believe it could be due to the fact that the flash is too close to the lens.

3. While taking videos, the powerful microphone also records the noise of the lens focussing, which can be annoying if shooting in a quiet place without too much ambient noise.

4. Because there is no viewfinder, shooting in bright sunlight is a challenge – or an act of faith – you just have to trust that the camera will get what you want – but cant see in the bright light!

Will not highly recommend.

Enjoy!

Taking pictures in the evening tends to have blurry results (often I am too close or too far for the flash to be much use.). Also, the flash is somewhat overly “hard” (rather than soft), so I don’t really like how the pictures look with flash.

I wish it was easier to switch between video and photo modes.

As a camera… What a disappointment; this applies to most point and shoots: they seem to get many eye catching parameters right, except the important ones. Large LCD screen? Check. Big brand name? Hey it’s a Nikon so it must be good, right? Wi-fi wizardry or some such? Check. Results? Awful.

Whenever you try to get a picture it tries to “think” for you, never relinquishes control… And eventually takes the shot… So the moment you were trying to capture is gone, unless you like having people grin artificially for ten minutes… It tries to flash at the slightest provocation, resulting in those garish “tourist” shots; you can disable the flash but then it’s completely underexposed… Because I’ve always had somewhat shaky hands my shots always came out blurry. The only good point about this camera in particular is its macro mode – with the right lighting, loads of time and even more patience. But right after I lent this camera and one of the batteries was lost, it’s just been gathering dust. What a waste!

But even worse, honestly, is that the experience is bad enough to kill any photographic aspirations, and that’s my biggest beef with this camera and its brethren. I ended up buying a Canon 30D DSLR and that’s been great; while I remain brand agnostic what could I possibly believe from Nikon?

So my advice is simple: If you’re getting a camera for yourself, look at a cheap DSLR, and if you’re worried about the size, look at the Olympus range of small DSLRs like the Olympus Evolt E520 10MP Digital SLR Camera with Image Stabilization w/ 14-42mm f/3.5-5.6 Zuiko Lens or compacts but not point and shoots like the Canon PowerShot G11 10MP Digital Camera with 5x Wide Angle Optical Stabilized Zoom and 2.8-inch articulating LCD, the Panasonic DMC-LX3 10.1MP Digital Camera with 24mm Wide Angle MEGA Optical Image Stabilized Zoom (Black)or their equivalent in other brands: You are buying this to unleash your creativity, for which you need to learn and eventually use manual control… No camera, even the ones that cost $8,000 can think better than you. If you’re planning a point and shoot as a gift maybe the person in question would gain more from even just a lens…