Color reproduction & white balance settings
The color reproduction of the Nikon Coolpix P90 is traditional. The emphasis seems to lie on the most natural reproduction as possible, without an excessive saturation. This is fine in itself, as you can simply enhance the colors to your own taste afterwards when editing the picture. In terms of white balance, the Nikon P90 has a hard time trying to filter an abundance of incandescent light effectively; the auto white balance suffers from color cast, whilst the applied white balance setting for incandescent light is not convincing and has to endure color cast. Manual white balance setting is the solution, and is able to provide an excellently balanced white balance over the entire ISO range.
Nikon Coolpix P90 image quality
The 12-megapixel image sensor features an ISO range up to 6400 ISO. Now this is a beautiful specification on paper, but in practice, the actual usefulness is often negligible. The first tests of the low ISO values show that the Nikon Coolpix P90 is able to achieve excellent to very good results up to ISO 200 with retention of details. However, from ISO 200 the internal noise reduction is starting to show, causing the loss of small details. At first glance, this will probably not show, but if you look more closely, you will soon notice the differences with the lower ISO values.
ISO values and noise reduction
The higher ISO of 400 is still usable in practice, but the retention of detail does not improve. Artifacts become visible due to the internal sharpening, and it is unfortunate to conclude that the disadvantages of high resolution on a small image sensor are proven once again. From 1600 ISO, the Nikon Coolpix P90 really gets into trouble. Granted, it may be useful to have such high ISO at hand, because it will allow you to take that one picture, however; from a quality view point, it is a disappointment.
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The high ISO of 3200 and 6400 are really emergency values and miss almost every detail in the image. The noise reduction is the main cause of this, while it seems to prioritize suppressing the noise instead of retaining detail..
Speediness of the Nikon Coolpix P90 camera
The Nikon P90 operates at a fairly good speed. The camera starts with a decent speed, about 2.5 sec. so that the first picture can be taken quickly. The auto focus seems to remain slightly behind; you often get the idea that the camera needs just a bit more time to focus. Those who are into action photography will probably struggle to capture the correct action moment in high resolution with the Coolpix P90. The shutter lag is fine, but the continuous speed of about 1.5 fps makes it difficult to capture real action moments. However, you can achieve more with the Nikon Coolpix P90, as long as you settle for 3 megapixels of resolution. In the Hi-Speed mode, the P90 is set to 3MP, allowing for shooting at a speed of approximately 11 fps with a maximum of over 35 pictures. Obviously, the use of a flash is not possible in these action modes.
Internal image editing against chromatic aberration and distortion
Nikon uses internal image editing, at which chromatic aberration and distortion are included. The advantage is an end result suffering less from these characteristics. A small disadvantage may be the loss in resolution and detail, but generally Nikon provides an excellent balance. Personally, I like this approach, especially from the perspective of consumers. The chromatic aberration does not really play a role in the final picture. There is some purple fringing found around the edges of a subject that deals with high contrast, but it stays within the limits.
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