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Digiscoping with the Nikon Coolpix 4500
I tested the Coolpix 4500 for three weeks, and I were not very impressed by the results of
this camera. There are other digiscopers, who are very satisfied with this camera, but the
camera didn't work well with my equipment. Don't ask me why.
The focus often failed, and when the focus did hit, the picture was not as sharp
as my Coolpix 990 photos. Laurence Poh , a great Malaysian digiscoper had the same problems with the Nikon Coolpix 4500.
I would have expected that there were much more details, cause of the 4MP sensor in
the camera, but I really could not find more details as in my Coolpix 990 shots. Even
after sharpening and resizing to 2048x xxx pixels (resolution of the 990) the 990
pictures looked much better as the 4500 pix.
I think the worse picture-quality is caused by the 4x zoom, instead of the 3x zoom of
the 990.
The colours came out great, sometimes a bit oversaturated. The autocontrast was a bit too hard,
so that I had change the contrast-setting to minimum.
In my eyes all images came out very soft, and were not as crisp as the 990 shots.
 The colours of the 4500 are
often a bit oversaturated.
When you set the ISO settings to 200 or higher, the ISO noise of the Coolpix 4500 is increasing, and shots taken at ISO400 are too noisy to use for prints. There's less noise with 4500 than with the 990, but in my eyes
there's no progress compared to the Coolpix 995.
But there's a little defference between the noise. The ISO noise of the Nikon Coolpix 4500 seems to be
more in the blue and the 990 and the 955 have more red ISO noise. Maybe it's caused by another kind of
CCD sensor in the camera.
In the photos I took with the 4500 combined to my Swarovski Spotting Scope there has often
been some color-fringing or chromatic abberations in bad light situations. But you can
easily remove them with a few clicks in Photoshop.
 As you can see, the picture seems
to be a litlle bit soft and
the ISO noise of ISO100 is
clearly visible.
So all in all for me the Nikon Coolpix 4500 was not good enough. Not much more
details than the 990 or the 995, most images were a little bit soft and the focus
often failed.
In the field I had so many situations were I thought, that it was the shot of the year, and
at home the pictures were totally unsharp.
And that's another point. The monitor of the 4500 is much too small for judging the pictures in the fields.
All in all the Nikon Coolpix 4500 was a great disappointment for me in terms of digiscoping.
Regards,
Gerd Rossen
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