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Digiscoping with the Nikon Coolpix 995
The Coolpix 995 was my first digiscoping-camera an it worked quite well for me.
The sharpness of the in focus-shots was great, and the details came out very well.
The disliked the colours of this cameras a little bit. They weren't as authentic as the
colours produced by other Nikon Coolpix cameras. Sometimes they looked really funny and
nothing to do with the reality.
The Standard contrast setting (auto-contrast) didn't work well most times. Some parts of
the pictures looked overexposed very often with blown out highlights. I reduced this by
setting the contrast at minimum (same problem with the Coolpix 4500 and 5000).
ISO noise was quite acceptable up to ISO200. ISO400 shots were full of noise.
I noticed, that the Nikon Coolpix 995 produced heavy chromatic abberations and color-fringing. Much more
than the other Coolpix cameras did. Sometimes they were so heavy, that it was very hard for
me to remove afterwards in photoshop.
The autofocus of the 995 didn't work good in most situations. Most pictures were slightly and
often heavily out of focus. The autofocus of the Nikon Coolpix 990 worked much more precisely.
 Digiscoped with Nikon Coolpix 995 and Swarovski 80HD Spotting Scope
The focus of the 995 failed very often and in lower light situations the focus ran in and out
without finding a focus-point. At the LCD-Screen most of the pics looked well, but the big surprise came at home when
viewing the pics at the computer. About 20-40 percent of the shots were ok, the other shots
were mess.
Because of that I decided to buy a Nikon Coolpix 990 and I've used both cameras at the same time
for a while. Whenever I were out photographing with the Coolpix 990 I had lots of good, sharp
shots. When I were out with the Nikon Coolpix 995, there were only a few hits on the
memory card.
 Crop of an original digiscoped Nikon Coolpix 995 file. Sharpness was ok and lots of details in the feathers.
This shot was taken with ISO200, and for that there is quite less noise in the pic.
But when the focus hits correctly the photos are sharp and they show lots of details.
All in all the Coolpix 995 is a quite good digiscoping camera, but far away from the
Nikon Coolpix 990. If the focus worked better, this could have been a perfect digiscoping
camera, but unfortunately the focus doesn't.
I don't want to say, that the Coolpix 995 is a bad camera. No, it isn't a bad one for digiscoping, but
the 990 is slightly better. For more comparision-infos of the coolpix range, please have
a look at the grey box at the top of the page.
Regards,
Gerd Rossen
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