Nikon CoolPix 5700Nikon expands their 5 megapixel offerings, with a long zoom, a new body, but the same legendary Nikon feature set!<<Video, Power, Software :(Previous) | (Next): Reference: Datasheet>> Page 12:Test Results & ConclusionReview First Posted: 5/29/2002 |
Test Results
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As always, I strongly urge readers to study my sample pictures page for the 5700, which has far more detail on the results of my tests than you'll find here in this condensed treatment.
Overall, the Coolpix 5700 delivered excellent image quality, with plenty of resolution and excellent color throughout my testing. Colors were natural and accurate, with appropriate saturation levels. (Strong yellows end up slightly undersaturated, but the effect isn't too evident with normally colored subjects.) The camera's automatic white balance setting produces good results under a wide variety of lighting conditions. Like most cameras I test, the auto white balance had a very hard time with the very yellowish light provided by household incandescent lighting (a very common light source for amateurs to shoot under), but the 5700's manual white balance option performed superbly under that shooting condition.
My main criticism of the 5700 is that images shot with it under harsh lighting conditions (eg, full noonday sun) came out rather contrasty, with a tendency to lose highlight detail when the midtones anywhere near bright enough. The "low contrast" option on the 5700's shooting menu didn't help much either, only seeming to affect overall brightness, darkening the image, without really decreasing the contrast any. This one quibble about the contrast aside, the 5700 delivered very pleasing images. Under more normal lighting, its tonal range was quite acceptable, and its color rendition was very good as well. I also liked the control offered by the camera's color saturation adjustment, which provided a useful range of variation.
Image noise on the 5700 is pretty decent, average to somewhat better than average under normal shooting conditions, and excellent in low light shooting. - In fact, long exposures are an area where the 5700 really shone, with low random noise levels, and a very effective noise-reduction system for removing "hot pixel" noise. The camera can time exposures out to 8 seconds, but bulb exposures as long as 5 minutes(!) are possible. Low light focusing is another matter though, as the 5700's autofocus system only worked at light levels of 1/2 foot-candle (5.5 lux) or above in my tests. (This is a factor of two darker than typical city night scenes, so the camera will work fine for typical outdoor night scenes under good illumination, but the camera can acquire bright well-exposed photos in conditions much darker than it can focus in. - And the lack of any distance readout in manual focusing mode further hampers its low light aspirations.)
The Coolpix 5700 performed well on the "laboratory" resolution test chart. (The ISO 12233 target.) It started showing artifacts in the test patterns at resolutions as low as 900 lines per picture height vertically and horizontally, but I found "strong detail" out to 1,300 lines (you could make an argument for 1350), and "extinction" of the target patterns didn't occur until about 1,500 lines. An excellent job!
Optical distortion on the Coolpix 5700 is a bit higher than average at the wide-angle end of the zoom range, where I measured an 0.9 percent barrel distortion. (0.8 percent barrel distortion is fairly typical, but still much too high, in my opinion.) The telephoto end fared much better, as I measured a 0.2 percent pincushion distortion. Chromatic aberration is fairly low, showing about one or two pixels of coloration on either side of the target lines. (This distortion is visible as a very slight colored fringe around the objects at the edges of the field of view on the resolution target.)
The Coolpix 5700's electronic optical viewfinder and LCD monitor were very accurate at wide angle, showing approximately 98 percent frame accuracy. At telephoto, my standard lines of measurement were just barely out of frame, so the accuracy was very close to 100 percent. I generally prefer viewfinders to be as accurate as possible, so the Coolpix 5700 performs very well in this regard.
The real limitation of electronic viewfinders comes when shooting under low light conditions, where the need for relatively rapid refresh of the viewfinder restricts the CCD's ability to collect light. The result is that cameras with EVFs can almost always capture good shots at light levels far darker than those at which you can still see through the viewfinder. This is true of the 5700 too, but I was very pleased to see that I could use the viewfinder for framing at light levels as dark as 1/8 foot-candle (1.3 lux).
Like the rest of Nikon's Coolpix line, the Coolpix 5700 performed very well in the macro category, capturing a tiny minimum area of just just 1.16 x 0.87 inches (29.4 x 22.1 millimeters), among the better macro areas I've seen. Resolution was excellent in the details of the dollar bill, and the printing details were very sharp. I noticed some softness in all four corners of the images, but details are fairly sharp in the center of the frame. (Soft corners are unfortunately a nearly universal problem with digicam macro options.) The Coolpix 5700's flash isn't usable this close, as the large lens barrel casts a shadow over most of the image area. (Check out Nikon's optional macro lighting accessory, which uses white LEDs to make a "ring" light for macro shots.) Despite the flash limitation, a very impressive performance.
Overall, I liked the Coolpix 5700 quite a bit, most particularly its very natural, "filmlike" color rendition. I really think Nikon got the color management on the Coolpix 5000 just right, and they carried this forward to the 5700 very well. In the areas of its greatest strength, its macro and low light capabilities are really outstanding. My favorite feature is the (magical) Best Shot Selector feature, which let me capture reasonably sharp handheld exposures at shutter times as long as 1/2 second.(!) I'm still no fan of electronic viewfinders (EVFs), due to their limited low light capability, but they're unfortunately a necessary evil in cameras with long zoom ratios. All in all, the 5700 is very deserving of its place atop Nikon's current consumer digicam lineup.
Conclusion
The Coolpix 5700 looks like a pretty dramatic upgrade of the Coolpix
5000, with big story obviously being its 8x zoom lens. It carries forward all
the features of the 5000, with the exception of the 5000's optical viewfinder.
The switch to an electronic viewfinder is unfortunately necessary with such
a long-ratio zoom lens, and does carry with it the advantage of improved framing
accuracy. The downsides though are that the camera is less usable in really
dark conditions, and has no low-power capture mode available. In terms of functional
design though, the 5700 is an excellent update to the 5000 model, with a better
control layout and somewhat smaller vertical cross-section. In terms of image
quality, the 5700 carries forward the characteristics of the 5000 very well,
particularly in the area of accurate, natural-looking color.
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