Nikon Coolpix P7700 photo samples

JPEGs start to show artifacts at as low as ISO 200, and by the time you hit ISO 400, there's obvious degradation in the details.

At the lowest ISO sensitivity, images display a natural-looking sharpness and tonality.

(1/100 sec, f2.5, spot metering, AWB, ISO 80, 46mm equivalent)

In good light, ISO 200 delivers nice, artifact-free textures, and Nikon doesn't get aggressive with the sharpening.

(1/60 sec, f4.5, spot metering, AWB, 92mm equivalent)

I think ISO 400 shots look mushy and soft, especially around edges, and I couldn't really get a better result from the raw file.

(1/160 sec, f5, spot metering, AWB, 105mm equivalent)

Edges get very messy at ISO 800, and the out-of-focus areas get quite mushy.

(1/40 sec, f3.2, matrix metering, AWB, 66mm equivalent)

At the higher ISO sensitivities, JPEG images don't fare very well. Here, the automatic white balance wiped out the warm tonality of the colors, and you can see noise-suppression artifacts on the clock and sky. There are also quite a few hot pixels in the sky. Shooting raw makes a huge difference at night.

(1/60 sec, f3.2, matrix metering, AWB, 66mm equivalent)

As long as you keep it small, and depending upon scene content, you can still get some usable photos at ISO 1600. (This image appears a lot darker in a browser than in Photoshop.)

(1/30 sec, f2.8, spot metering, AWB, 58mm equivalent)

While shooting raw helps at the higher sensitivities -- especially for preserving colors -- there's no magic. You'll still end up with quite a bit of grain.

(1/30 sec, f2.8, spot metering, AWB, 58mm equivalent)

Though I'm not crazy about the colors in low light, in good light the camera produces relatively accurate, saturated colors.

The default Standard Picture Control profile increases contrast and sharpening a hair, and tends to shift hues just a little.

(1/80 sec, f3.5, spot metering, AWB, ISO 80, 58mm equivalent)

Typical for its class, the P7700 doesn't have a lot of latitude in the highlights, but there's enough to bring down some of the blown-out areas in a shot like this. In brighter shots (such as with light-green apples), there's nothing to recover.

(1/200 sec, f4.5, spot metering, AWB, ISO 200, 28mm equivalent)

The lens produces relatively nice out-of-focus areas for its class.

(1/100 sec, f2, spot metering, AWB, ISO 80, 28mm equivalent)

The lens remains pretty sharp at the wider apertures, though by f8 it's quite soft.

Nikon defaults to distortion control off, and the lens has pretty noticeable asymmetrical barrel distortion at its widest, plus some pincushion distortion starting from the middle of the zoom range.

The camera has a reasonable set of special effects, but only a few have adjustment options, and even on the ones that do it's hard to get decent results. Also, the Paint effect, shown here, is more faux-HD than painting.