POSITIVE:
+ Soft keys and dials. Anyone who wants to quickly fall back on certain functions in the menu, can make not only the exposure correction right above the right dial, but has over the left wheel well quickly access, inter alia, the ISO setting or white balance. This creates speed when photographing. About the setting wheels (front and back) you can wade through the menus without taking your finger off the camera. Even that creates tempo. About U1, U2 and U3 at the mode dial and on the setting of "My" on the quick menu dial can be certain basic settings predefine (eg Shooting in low light or backlight).
+ Lightning. The idea is as simple as it is ingenious: Only when you really need the flash, you have to press a button, through which it pops up. In all other situations (and that's usually the case) the lightning stays out flat. A real hammer is the possibility the full flash in steps of 1/2, 1/4, ... be able to adjust to 1/32 and 1/64. This includes over-exposure in certain parts of the immediate past. The range of the built-in flash is 0.3 to 9 (!) M for wide-angle position and 0.3 to 4.5 m for telephoto zoom position when the ISO sensitivity is set to Auto. (This does not work with an external flash.)
+ Auto Focus: It is fast and works finally in low-light environments (even at high focal lengths). Here Nikon has learned from the past. As a precaution, one still has a manual (!) Built focusing. Although the works somewhat awkward, by displaying the subject as a magnifying glass in the center of the display. But you zoom the bar at the right edge of the screen up or down, the magnifying glass image is sharp. There is also the option of saving the autofocus on the AF-L button on the camera back.
+ Feel and ergonomics: For the right thumb and palm is at a medium sized hand despite the many buttons and rotary wheels enough space to hold the camera well can. The index finger of the left hand is the best grip on the top of the folding monitor. But still interfere with eyelets for the carrying strap (they are just too big, even if they are rotated, slightly push away). Overall, the surface of the camera makes a high impression. Everything is very handy and the camera does not slip in sweaty fingers out of his hand.
+ Virtual Horizon. About one of the freely selectable function keys can display a virtual horizon that is very helpful in architectural photography or the sea / lake. Alternatively, one can prove the function key with a grid pattern.
+ The diopter setting ranges from -3 to +3.
+ Photos: Crisp sharp and contrasty. In wide angle there is very little distortion, but here you can achieve significant improvements by "distortion correction". The best results I've done with AUTO (ranging from 100 to 800 ISO). In low light, the setting HiISO / high sensitivity automatic like (it ranges 100-1600 ISO). Can direct you to adjust from 100 to ISO 3200, afterwards only Hi1 (6400 ISO). Although the camera in low-light area adduced very good results, noise images above ISO 800 (depending on the ambient light more or less). This, however, do all the models in this price range, because the chip is not just comparable to a DSL.
+ Effects: Many nice gimmicks, especially where one only a single color can emphasize while everything else is black and white (!). The camera automatically detects dogs and cats ...
NEGATIVE
- Reduced noise night mode. The ISO sensitivity ranges from 400 to 12800. However, the camera takes pictures on only with 2048x1536. Ambitious photographers like smile about. In addition, the image quality is very poor in this mode!
- Hinged monitor. The folding mechanism is solid, keeps in frequent use safely long, but you can just reduce the monitor only to about 80 ° and raise to about 105 °. To turn it (eg for self-portraits) would have been perfect.
- Hardware: front of the lens while sitting a strip curtain, but no protective glass, so that the left and right a gap is visible, can be seen by the one two silver feathers (?). Whether that's from Nikon so willed, I do not know, in any case, the lens is thus unprotected free. In my model (and 3 now other tested P7100 "creaks" In addition, the zoom at all zoom levels, even when one puts it in the menu to auto, normal or low. He purrs / no buzzing by, as I know that from other cameras. For shooting movies, you can set the zoom to "quiet", but then he reacts very slowly. Perfectly responding Zoom when you served him about F1 and "predefined zoom levels".
- Self-timer: Here you can only between 2 sec and 10 sec set. However, 2 sec are too short! Then I would have preferred 3 sec (as before).
A tip at the end (because that is not intuitively easy to find): Who does not want to film in HDMI mode, but in VGA mode, you must first set the mode dial on the camera icon, then rotate the quick menu dial to "QUALITY" and press the Menu key. Appear on the display to choose (240 x 320) options, VGA (640x480) or QVGA.
