Nikon Coolpix P · announced February 2014

The Nikon Coolpix P340: an f/1.8 pocket compact that swapped GPS for Wi-Fi

Nikon's 2014 enthusiast compact kept the bright lens and the control ring of its predecessor and added Wi-Fi. Reviewers liked the pictures and the controls, then said how little had changed since the P330.

Launched

February 2014

Launch price

$379.95 · £349.99 · €429¹

Sensor

12.2 MP CMOS

Lens

24–120 mm, 5×

Card

SD, SDHC, SDXC

Battery

EN-EL12

Specs and sources

Meet the camera

There is not much of it. PhotographyBLOG gives 103 by 58 by 32 millimetres and about 194 grams with battery and card, in a magnesium-alloy chassis.² Reviewed.com described a sharp-edged rectangle with only a minor sliver of rubber for grip, and said the low weight made up for that.⁴ On the front is a 5x zoom covering 24 to 120 millimetres, opening to f/1.8 at the wide end and closing to f/5.6 at the long end.¹²

The announcement came on 7 February 2014, with a stated price of $379.95, £349.99 or €429 and sale from 27 February.¹ Imaging Resource's specification table gives a date of 15 March instead, and describes the price as about $380, the same as the Coolpix P330 had cost when it shipped.⁵

Why this one was interesting

A fast lens in a small body

The f/1.8 lens was the headline, and Nikon's announcement set it among a built-in ND filter, focus peaking with adjustable intensity and a multifunction ring around the lens for focus, shutter speed or ISO.¹ PhotographyBLOG welcomed the ring, praised having separate controls for aperture and shutter speed, and found the body solid and light.² Compared with our Coolpix P7000 of 2010, which weighed about 360 grams and opened to f/2.8, this was a lighter and brighter camera with a shorter zoom.

Wi-Fi instead of GPS

The headline addition was wireless. Reviewed.com summed it up as "Swap GPS for WiFi and call it a day."⁴ PhotographyBLOG, Imaging Resource and Reviewed.com all noted that the GPS of the P330 was gone.²⁵⁴ Nikon said the phone could pass its own GPS data into the pictures.¹ Pocket-lint found the companion app basic: it previewed and downloaded pictures from the card, with no direct sharing, and asked for wireless remote control to be added.³ PhotographyBLOG and Reviewed.com both say the app could also control the camera remotely, so the sources disagree on that point.²⁴

How much had changed

Reviewed.com listed the sensor, lens, screen and core design as unchanged from the P330.⁴ Imaging Resource listed the changes as click-stops on the ring, Wi-Fi in place of GPS, some firmware tweaks, battery life up about ten percent and a slightly lighter body.⁵ PhotographyBLOG called it a rather modest upgrade and recommended the P330 if you could still find one; at the time it was under £200 in the UK.²

What was lost

The list of omissions is short. There is no viewfinder and the screen does not move.⁵ PhotographyBLOG found no live histogram or display button, and no dedicated stabiliser button, which sits in the set-up menu, and counted at least four button presses to change ISO and other often-used settings.² No HDMI cable was supplied in the box.² The zoom is short, and the aperture has shrunk to f/5.6 by 120 millimetres.²⁵

The dark: its weak point

The three full reviews agree that the bottom of the ISO range is clean and disagree about where it stops being so. PhotographyBLOG found noise-free images at ISO 100 to 400, noise appearing at 800, steady loss of detail through 1600 and 3200, and ISO 6400 and 12800 unusable.² Pocket-lint saw clean low-ISO files and colour noise in the shadows at mid and high settings, and thought the P340 beat the Panasonic LX7 there, though the LX7's lens is wider-opening.³ Reviewed.com's measurements kept noise under 2 percent through ISO 12,800 (Imaging Resource says the top ISO settings are monochrome-only, so the sources differ on what the camera offers there), but the reviewers said noise showed from about ISO 400, that heavy noise reduction smeared detail, and that ISO 80 to 800 was the range to use.⁴

Real photographs taken with this camera. The sensitivity shown is recorded in each file's own EXIF data.

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The little wins

The P340 with its wrist strap, seen from the front and above. · Peachyeung316 · CC BY-SA 4.0 · Commons

A ring with click-stops

Imaging Resource noted that the P330's lens ring now had click-stops.⁵ Pocket-lint liked how it felt, though the clicks did not always register at speed, so aperture changes could lag.³ Reviewed.com missed the firm clicks of the Canon S120's ring.⁴

A fast burst

PhotographyBLOG gave ten frames a second for ten Fine JPEGs.² Imaging Resource's specification puts the burst at about one second long.⁵

Raw and manual modes

Raw capture was in the announcement,¹ and PhotographyBLOG listed P, S, A and M modes.² Pocket-lint added that raw plus JPEG shooting needed no wait between a first and a second shot, after which the buffer was too busy for more.³

Focus peaking and an ND filter

Both are in Nikon's feature list: peaking to help manual focus, and a filter for slower shutter speeds in bright light.¹ Pocket-lint also listed focus peaking as new.³ PhotographyBLOG listed the 60-second maximum shutter as a plus for night work.²

The rear of the P340, with its fixed 3-inch screen. · Peachyeung316 · CC BY-SA 4.0 · Commons

Close macro

PhotographyBLOG gave a closest focus of about 2 centimetres,² which Pocket-lint places at the wide end, with about 30 centimetres at 120 millimetres.³

How it drew the picture

PhotographyBLOG scored image quality 4.5 out of 5 and called the pictures good for a compact with a 1/1.7-inch sensor, noting limited purple fringing, some vignetting and barrel distortion at 24 millimetres, and images a little soft at default sharpening.² Reviewed.com measured sharpness that peaked at 24 millimetres and softened with zoom, with software over-sharpening that could halo high-contrast edges.⁴ It also found colour accurate in lab tests in the Standard mode but undersaturated, and automatic white balance leaning orange under incandescent light and green under fluorescent.⁴ Pocket-lint found little visible difference from the P330.³

Photos taken with this camera, from Wikimedia Commons, credited under each picture.

Where it let you down

Speed is where the reviews pull apart. PhotographyBLOG put power-up at around half a second, with the lens extended and the screen lit, and focus and exposure at about a quarter of a second with no further shutter delay.² Reviewed.com said the camera took around five seconds from start-up before it could capture an image, and blamed the "molasses-in-January powerup time".⁴ We cannot say which is closer to a typical unit, and we have not tested one. Pocket-lint found autofocus surprisingly swift and better than it remembered the P330's, though it had no side-by-side test.³ Reviewed.com and Pocket-lint both found the menus slow, Pocket-lint also found no quick-access menu and a rear thumbwheel that duplicated the pad, and PhotographyBLOG complained that common settings took at least four button presses.⁴³² Raw bursts were the slowest: PhotographyBLOG shot ten raw files at ten frames a second, then waited over a minute while the camera processed them.²

Pocket-lint also found that a number of shots confirmed in focus were not, and found shooting several frames helpful in macro mode.³ PhotographyBLOG called the rated 220 shots per charge barely adequate,² and noted that the battery is charged in the camera, so a spare needs a separate charger.² Coverage here is thinner than for a mainstream model: Imaging Resource's page is a first look with no lab results.

What the reviewers said in 2014

Reviewed.com's alternative, the Canon S120, is covered in our PowerShot S120 review.

The timeline

• 7 February 2014Nikon announces the P340, on sale from 27 February in PhotographyBLOG's copy of the release.¹
• 15 March 2014The availability date in Imaging Resource's specification table.⁵
• 24 March 2014Pocket-lint publishes its review.³
• 3 April 2014PhotographyBLOG publishes its review.²
• 30 September 2014Reviewed.com publishes its review.⁴

Should you buy one now?

Buy one if you want a small, light camera with a fast wide lens and manual controls, and you can live with a short zoom and a battery rated for about 220 shots. It launched at $379.95;¹⁶ what it sells for now is a question for the sold listings, not for us. If you want the older, bigger version of the same idea, see our Coolpix P7000. Before you bid, check these:

• The battery. It uses an EN-EL12, and Nikon's manual says it is charged in the camera from the supplied EH-71P adapter and UC-E21 cable; the MH-65 charger, which charges a battery without the camera, is listed as available separately.⁷ Fresh cells are on Amazon ↗, and a stand-alone charger ↗ lets you charge a spare.
• The cable. The box held a UC-E21 USB cable;⁷ see our UC-E21 cable page.
• The card. SD, SDHC and SDXC cards are covered by the manual;⁷ see our memory card guide.
• The controls. Check that the ring turns and clicks and that the lens extends and retracts cleanly.
• The Wi-Fi. Reviewers used Nikon's Wireless Mobile Utility app;³⁴ we did not check whether the app still works with current phones.
• The raw files. The camera writes NRW raw files.¹

If you are wondering why cameras like this are being hunted down again, we tell that story once, in Pictures that never left the card.

See recent sold prices on eBay ↗Shop on eBay ↗EN-EL12 battery ↗

Sources

1. PhotographyBLOG, Nikon Coolpix P340 announcement (7 Feb 2014; a copy of Nikon's release)
2. PhotographyBLOG, Nikon Coolpix P340 review by Mark Goldstein (3 Apr 2014)
3. Pocket-lint, Nikon Coolpix P340 review by Mike Lowe (24 Mar 2014)
4. Reviewed.com, Nikon Coolpix P340 review by Chris Thomas and Jackson Ruckar (30 Sep 2014)
5. Imaging Resource, Nikon P340 first look by Mike Tomkins (posted Feb 2014; the page has specifications and no lab results)
6. DPReview, Nikon Coolpix P340 product page (MSRP $379.95; EN-EL12 rated at 220 shots)
7. Nikon, COOLPIX P340 User's Manual (box contents, battery and charging, memory cards)

Camera photos by Peachyeung316 (CC BY-SA 4.0); other photographs are credited under each one, all via Wikimedia Commons. Links to eBay and Amazon are affiliate links.