I knew there were a lot of rules when visiting the White House, but I didn’t expect to not be able to bring my camera. Maybe not all the lenses, no, but not the body and a itty bitty 50mm; but there it is, plain as day on the website: One of the prohibited items is cameras with detachable lenses.

Cue the “NO DOGS ALLOWED” sound from Snoopy, Come Home!

As I finished my request for a tour of the iconic establishment at 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue, I was left in a conundrum. I can’t visit and not take pictures, but I don’t trust myself with only an iPhone. What to do, what to do…so what I did was research, and I found my solution.

That solution is the Nikon Coolpix A.

My research let me to believe that this camera was like a baby DSLR: It has a DX sensor (like my D7100), and it has the Program/Shutter/Aperture/Manual (PSAM) wheel just like my D810. I can take both raw images and JPEG files, so I can edit these the same way I can my professional photographs. It has a lot of features for such a little body! Sadly it has been discontinued, but thankfully everything seems to live a little longer on Amazon.

I picked one up, and spent the weekend playing around (at least on Saturday…then winter came back). I have to say, I am mighty impressed with its photographic power. I’m not much for zoom lenses, so the practically prime 18.55mm is just fine with me; I also have a lot of love for the wide angle, so again not a drawback to me that I can get super-tight with this lens (and its decently-sized 16MP images allow for some tighter crops if need be).

The one element that I wish it had was a viewfinder rather than just a LCD screen The number of times I caught myself raising it up to my eye is kind of embarrassing); it is a little weird to me to hold up my camera like a smartphone to take a photo, but it’s not the worst thing in the world. I can see this being a big help with foodtography for TripAdvisor, or even for early morning walks around an unknown city.

I am excited to play around with it way more than I have, but I can say with confidence that this will fill a little slot left in my camera bag.

Here’s a brief sample of its photographic powers; expect updates as we move into summer.

#Education #Reviews #Nikon #Coolpix