Nikon Coolpix P500 (Black)

• Average user rating: 3.5 stars out of 14 reviews
• My rating: 0 stars

• 1
• 2
• next

• Sort by: Most helpful Highest rating Lowest rating Most recent

• 10 stars

  Amazing Camera!

  by S-Bruck on November 11, 2011

  Pros: + Battery life is reasonably good
  + Big LCD screen
  + Photo quality is not bad for this type of camera
  + Very easy to use
  + Amazing lens and zoom
  + Menu is clear and easy to navigate

  Cons: - No memory card that comes with it

  Summary: I am not a professional photographer nor do I claim to be a semi pro/amateur. I am more of the average person who likes taking pictures for personal use ...

  Read more

  Summary: I am not a professional photographer nor do I claim to be a semi pro/amateur. I am more of the average person who likes taking pictures for personal use - families, holidays and events. So with that background I don't claim to be know it all in the field of digital photography nor camera. So this review will come from this point of view. I used the camera on a recent family holiday in Hanoi for 5 days.
  
  Camera: big but not too heavy to lug about. We bought a Lowe Alpine camera casing to fit in the camera, battery and memory card. Yes it is obvious but you can put it in your rucksack or even in a big woman's handbag easily. This camera has no memory card that comes with it so you have to purchase one.It does have a 100 MB internal memory. Because of the HD and the size we deliberately choose a Transcend 16GB SDHC Class 10 Memory Card. The result was very good with pictures taken very quickly. Battery life is reasonably good - again dependent on usage, and how often you take the pictures and how often you views the picture on screen. But for my standards and usage we didn't have to recharge every single day. However, once charging it takes about 10 hours if the battery completely drained. In the beginning it does seem that the battery has a bad battery life but after a few charges it improved dramatically.
  
  LCD screen: Big and what we love about it the fact you can angulate it to take pictures.
  
  Usage: Very easy to use for someone who is lazy to read the manual like myself. But my other half is far keener and honestly you make far better use with the camera after reading the manual and trying all the setting. But it is very straightforward and not complicated at all. Play and play and read the manual. The camera itself is easily to hold and my niece who is 5 could take a fairly decent picture without feeling it too heavy and bulky and difficult to aim. There are functional buttons like image stabilization, anti-blur, panorama picture assistance, side zoom etc. Most are available anyway in high end digital camera in the last few years. For someone like myself (not great camera literate) it is all pretty good stuff.
  
  Lens and zoom: one word - amazing. We were sitting on a boat where we can zoom in to very clear detailed picture. Lens does come with a lens cover. My other half did note that the image does distort on zooming in (a bit of barrel vision). Honestly I don't know if this is a common problem or specifically due to this Nikon camera.
  
  Download: easy and straightforward. Either connected straight from the camera to the computer or use the memory card.
  
  This camera was a step up from a compact digital camera. Certainly it was worth getting this camera compare to a digital SLR which would have been more complicated for myself. Recommended.
  
  and oh the camera had a tumble and survived without a problem and if you will buy the Coolpix P500 I suggest you have to check for best deal before you decide at: *********.info/COOLPIX-P500 )
  
  Enjoy with your camera!.
  
  Updated on Nov 30, 2011

  Edit Deal
  
  I suggest you have to check for best deal before you decide at: Bestdealschecking.info/coolpix-p500/
  
  Hope this helps.

  Show less

  9 out of 9 users found this user opinion helpful.

• 8 stars

  Great all-around camera

  by mglish on April 13, 2011

  Pros: Great zoom range
  Easy to access features
  "Scenes" feature provides versatility
  Easy to use video feature

  Cons: Zoom isn't smooth
  Hard to get consistently good photo quality
  Zoom motor is loud on video
  Video quality isn't spectacular

  Summary: I got this camera because I wanted a lot of zoom, better pictures than a point-and-shoot, and video in the same camera. All in all this camera fulfills my wishes. ...

  Read more

  Summary: I got this camera because I wanted a lot of zoom, better pictures than a point-and-shoot, and video in the same camera. All in all this camera fulfills my wishes. It's a very nice size. The zoom range is wonderful. I don't feel the images are "soft" as CNET says. My quibble is that the colors aren't very rich. Maybe I just haven't found the right settings. The video is pretty good. If I did a lot of video I'd want a dedicated video camera but it's just what I want for the limited videoing that I do. However the zoom motor is very loud and you can only zoom in steps. You can press the zoom button and it quickly jumps to the next increment vs. moving slowly. I wish it had a manual zoom to eliminate both.

  Show less

  3 out of 3 users found this user opinion helpful.

• 9 stars

  Great feature set, amazing lens, fair video

  by drdfwatt on March 27, 2011

  Pros: 1) 36 x zoom - can shoot almost anything from very wide-angle to extreme telephoto in lightweight package
  2) Great flexibility - more modes than you can possibly use, including multiple high speed and high definition video modes
  3) Finally, Nikon makes a

  Cons: 1) in video modes, focus seems sometimes hit or miss, seems to take a long time to actually focus when panning or zooming
  2) pictures can seem a bit soft and lack apparent resolution
  3) anything above ISO 400 is mostly unusable except for very small pict

  Summary: this camera is basically only a modest tweaking of the P100, except for the incredible lens. Unquestionably the most amazing lens kit Nikon or anyone else has ever made. To ...

  Read more

  Summary: this camera is basically only a modest tweaking of the P100, except for the incredible lens. Unquestionably the most amazing lens kit Nikon or anyone else has ever made. To go from an extreme wide angle to over 800 mm (35mm equivalent) is remarkable in such a small lightweight package. However this also means a small sensor, with all the attendant trade-offs, particularly the less than great performance in low light, subsequent aggressive noise reduction in anything above ISO 400, and the usual deterioration of picture quality in low light.
  
  Balancing all this is the fact that no other compact super zoom camera manages to escape these physical Constraints, although I believe the Panasonic FZ 100 does do a better job With preserving video quality, although probably not picture quality compared to the Nikon P500. If you accept that this type of camera involves some intrinsic compromises (poor low light performance, lower effective resolution than its pixel count would suggest particularly compared to a digital SLR) then you won't be unhappy with the results. In order to get this kind of lens range on a digital SLR, you have to probably carry two or three lenses, costing thousands and thousands of dollars and weighing a boatload. To get all this flexibility for under $400, despite some compromises, seems like a pretty good deal. If you're looking for SLR quality, well, first of all you'll be disappointed, and secondly, you should know better.
  
  Compared to the competition (at this point that really means Canon's and Panasonic's competing super zoom models), the Nikon P500 offers a better lens, slightly faster operation than the Canon, and slightly poorer video than the Panasonic. It weighs less than either of the other models and is roughly the same size. Although the Panasonic beats it significantly in the video department (an increasingly important feature for a lot of people), Panasonic loses points because their JPEG algorithm produces more problematic results than Nikon's.
  
  All in all, 4.5/5 stars.

  Show less

  2 out of 3 users found this user opinion helpful.

• 7 stars

  camera with many facilities at reasonable price tag.

  by shireish58 on September 27, 2011

  Pros: Performance of 36X optical zoom is amazing and fort trials one can shoot in normal mode in dusk light, without using tripod, just cover the flash with a finger. Results are fine.

  Cons: Nikon must admit it's poor battery performance. Easy Panaroma is not easy. Sony has best, user friendly Panaroma facility.

  1 out of 1 users found this user opinion helpful.

• 1 stars

  Complete Disappointment

  by aishetudozie on July 1, 2011

  Pros: Nice picture quality when it actually shoots

  Cons: I bought the camera in order to capture my growing toddler and this camera couldn't keep up. Worse still, it just stopped working. I called Nikon service support and they couldn't help me. Said I should mail it in, what a joke. The camera isn't even

  Summary: Don't buy this camera. It works well and then it just doesn't.

  Summary: Don't buy this camera. It works well and then it just doesn't.

  1 out of 1 users found this user opinion helpful.

• 8 stars

  Unbeatable value for money

  by ColyMar on June 30, 2011

  Pros: Price, quality, Nikon throughout, wonderful after sales help from Nikon website, easy to use yet full of facilities

  Cons: Image quality not as good as a Nikon costing 4 times as much

  Summary: Unbelievable price for what you get, excellent zoom including digital when focussing on a specific distant object. Loads of facilities all easy to use.

  Summary: Unbelievable price for what you get, excellent zoom including digital when focussing on a specific distant object. Loads of facilities all easy to use.

  1 out of 1 users found this user opinion helpful.

• 10 stars

  Great camera for the money, Easy to use.

  by Luckycharlie on May 13, 2011

  Pros: Wide angle to over 800mm lens is fantastic and very light in weight. Controls are the same as any digital point and shoot and easy to find.

  Cons: Battery was dead 2 times when I picked it up to take on a photo shoot. I still haven't figured out why, but I bought a spare battery just in case. The batteries are very inexpensive. 29.00 at Ritz and even cheaper at BH photo and video in NY. You get the

  Summary: It's a great camera and easy to carry on field trips because it's so light in weight. Easy to shoot in a hurry because the controls are in ...

  Read more

  Summary: It's a great camera and easy to carry on field trips because it's so light in weight. Easy to shoot in a hurry because the controls are in the same place as any other digital camera. The people that have trouble with the video quality must not have gone into the menu and set in on high resolution. The only thing I have on that is the sound is really low on the camera but works on the computer fine. People keep saying that there is no external charger, but there is. If you don't want to wait 4 and a half hours for it to charge in the camera, you can get a Nikon MH-61 charger from BH Photo and Video in NY for 18.95 and it will charge the battery in only 2 hours !!!
  You can also get a Nikon brand spare battery from them for only 21.95 and cheapest shipping is fast (3 or 4 days UPS.) All in all I would buy this camera, it's great.

  Show less

  1 out of 1 users found this user opinion helpful.

• 8 stars

  great camera

  by sherif_soaida on April 8, 2011

  Pros: light weight, very rapid start up, excellent night photos, can take snaps when recording movies without affecting recording (unlike canon sx30is)

  Cons: sound o zoom is high specially in movies, some times i constantly hear sound from the lens!!

  Summary:
  
  Updated on Apr 23, 2011

  cons: battery indicator is not very helpful to estimate exactly when the battery will get empty.
  pros: great image stabilization

  Summary:
  
  Updated on Apr 23, 2011

  cons: battery indicator is not very helpful to estimate exactly when the battery will get empty.
  pros: great image stabilization

  1 out of 1 users found this user opinion helpful.

• 6 stars

  Too early for a full review as I've shot only stills.

  by seabee65 on April 23, 2012

  Pros: I'm happy w/it & that's all that matters. It does what I want & does it well.

  Cons: Maybe too much to learn about this camera but I'm only 70 & have the time. :^)

• 9 stars

  BEST BRIDGE CAMERA ON THE MARKET

  by sas012345 on December 29, 2011

  Pros: Everything

  Cons: Sometimes Freezes

  Summary: Don't listen to what CNET says about the image quality because the image quality is stellar and you should get this camera over any other camera you had in ...

  Read more

  Summary: Don't listen to what CNET says about the image quality because the image quality is stellar and you should get this camera over any other camera you had in mind.

  Show less

• 1
• 2
• next

See pricing