I've been a mostly casual photographer for more years than I can count, starting with cheesy little cameras and working my way up through Konica gear to Nikon, the gold standard in the world of professional photographers. Today I take photos, sometimes paid, mostly just for fun, with a Nikon D90 tricked out with a full set of additional Nikon gear, about $2500 worth, plus or minus a few hundred dollars.

The results are quite pleasing and I have photos all over the walls of my home, photos that I took, mostly of my children. When I upgraded from the D80 (which was itself an upgrade from my D100), I had shot about 18,000 pictures on it. The D90 is newer, so I think I'm still below 5,000 shots taken.

Nikon Coolpix P90 Digital SLR

When Nikon contacted me to try out one of their Coolpix cameras, the P90, I was quite intrigued. After all, in addition to my big Nikon DSLR setup, my other cameras are a Sony DSC-W90, about the size of a deck of playing cards, and my Apple iPhone. The P90 fits neatly in the middle, less complicated (and expensive) than the D90, and far more capable than the frankly crappy Sony, where 90% of the pics are too grainy to print.

What most attracted me to the P90 was its 24x digital zoom, effectively giving you a staggering focal range of 26-624mm. That's quite a zoom factor in a small camera that can easily nestle in a backpack or computer bag. But since most every feature of a modern digital camera has been commoditized and then end up identical on every camera in a specific price range, regardless of vendor, the only real question to me was: how do the pictures look?