First, I want to start off by say that this is not the cheapest camera you can buy. That would be the Nikon Coolpix L26, and yes the price of under $100 was atractive, I chose to spend just a bit more money on a much better digital camera.
You see, I paid attention to two things when shopping for my new camera: One was the fact that I wanted to buy a small and light compact camera and and not have to lug around a bulky DSLR, and the second was I wanted buy a rangefinder style camera with the fastest lens I could afford.
Why A Fast Lens?
Because it’s the lens that can make or break a digital camera. It doesn’t matter about red eye reduction or megapixels or any other of the many features today’s digital cameras offer. Without a great lens on the front of the digital camera all else becomes meaningless. And that’s why I bought the Nikon Coolpix L310 because this lens offers a fast f/1.8 aperture lens on the front. When you compare the lens on the Nikon L310 to other cameras you will find that the L310 lens is up to four times faster than the other compacts that usually offer f/4.0 to f./5.6.
In the real wold, this means I get photos out of scenes other cameras can’t. Take my son’s birthday party – we turned out the lights so the only light was from the candles, and I still managed to get great shots with just a few candles lighting the scene. Because the L310 lens offers more light to the sensor, the shutter speeds are higher and the result is sharper photos i would not have had otherwise.
I could not be any happier with my digital camera choice, and I recommend this compact camera to anybody and everybody that asks