Hey all this is your die hard Sony lover SinMin here...Well I can't lie I broke down and bought the 8700 on a whim, to be honest it looked like a really cool little camera (which it is) and the shots I took at work ( if your new as a second job I sell cameras) were pretty good considering conditions.First thing you notice about this little powerhouse is it is set up completely different from its counterparts of the same class, wich brings me to one of the reasons I gave it only 4 stars, this is a tough camera to use, by way of navigating the menus. Even a seasoned pro can easily find themselves lost! Even going thru the manual it will take you awhile to get a feel for the 8700 but once you do I can tell you the results are impressive!To start in a strange place the first thing I noticed is that compared to my beloved Sony F-828 the 8700 has much less ISO noise at 100 or 200, but it gets rather hairy at 400, however the pic's seemed to clean up better with the Nikon. Next that nice Nikon 8X zoom lens is sweet, it ain't a Ziess for sure but it is one of the better lenses I've used. Probably the biggest thing I love about this camera are the features. One thing I am always weary of (even on Sonys) are the so called scene modes, on the 8700 however they are deadbang on the money. I shot an incredible series of sunsets with the 8700's "sunset mode" and I swear the colors almost exploded out of the camera! And the "panorama mode" is too cool beyond words giving you the ability to create panoramic shots that are a full 360 degrees, and are all put together seamlessly with the included software! But the single reason why I initally bought the camera was for the "bulb" function. That is a setting which will allow you to to create long exsposures ranging from 30 seconds to an eternal 10 minutes!! WOW! I do alot of slow shutter photography so this feature alone made the 8700 a must try. Now- there are a few other things that kept me from giving the 8700 5 stars, such as the placement of the zoom and power controls, more than once right after I got it I went to zoom in on something and I shut the damn thing off!! The controls and thier placement in general turned me off, however if your stubborn (and I am) you'll get used to them, and fall in love with this camera depite everything. Again controls aside, once you can navagate the menus and buttons this is a powerhouse of a picture taker! If not for the things I mentioned picture and color wise I rate it almost as high as the F-828, the Sony squeaks ahead by just a hair (Love that 4 color CCD!) other than that it is a camera I would strongly reccomend, but only to someone with prior digital camera experience and a basic working knowledge of photgraphy. This is by no means a point and shoot camera, but if your a greenhorn and presistant this could be your baby. As for the battery Its not bad but it ain't great. If you gonna use that "blulb function at any length you better plug in the camera! The battery life is around 120-145 minutes to sony's 220-240. And the AC adapter is an extra you have to buy (BOO Nikon) A funny thing with this camera is the lens hood (another extra you'll have to buy) I believe in lens hoods but this thing is HUGE!!! I swear I laughed out loud when it ariived, but hey it works fine (even though it looks funny) and it makes a kickin stand for the camera in down time! The last thing and I could have overlooked everything else, my pet peeve about 8700 is the flash. While the flash works fine it is annoying beyond words! This is due to the fact that the AF light/sensor is located right next to it, so when you need AF but no flash the stupid thing pops up anyway! ARRRRRRRRGH!! The only way around it is to make sure the flash is set to off before you make your shot. When I bought the 8700 I also got a great deal on its succesor the 8800, I bought both and figured I'd return the one I liked least...I kept both! The 8700 is a tricky tempramental little power house, if you give yourself the time to feel it out you will love it but like my baby the 828 the 8700 will make you work for those good shots, and bleed for the great ones. Check out the 8800 (and my review) I also reccomend the Sony F-828 and even though it has far less zoom ability the Sony DSC-V3. The 8700 is compact but can hold its own with the best of them! Could this be love!? Happy shooting and thanks for reading!

Great features. Easy to shoot.

Unhappy with the resolution.

I've had this camera for about one year have taken more than 10,000 photographs with it. The reason I bought this camera was for the time lapse feature, what we'll do is take a picture every 30 seconds to one hour until your memory card is filled. Or you stop it. This feature alone is awesome. Combine that with an eight megapixel sensor 8X optical zoom, and you have a bad boy camera. One thing with the Nikon line is the metal bodies that just adds so much to the feel.

One recommendation is if you get this camera or a similar one get the Nikon battery add-on pack MB-E5700. It adds a better grip and feel to the camera. So have complained about low light, autofocus this is only a problem, If you're shooting an auto all the time. If you learn to control shutter speed and aperture you should have no problems in shooting in low light.

Nothing really negative to say about the camera I'm going to keep it for awhile, since it does take such great photographs. 8X optical is awesome.

One major problem with this camera is its focusing system. Autofocus is not reliable in a low light (what camera thinks to be a low light -- and this is not what you expect). On the other hand manual focus is comletely inefficient.

Ok, this isn't one of my usual hands-on reviews. I ain't got the kind of money to buy all these cameras and test them. But I wanted to give potential buyers some help...

Should you consider an SLR-type EVF (electronic viewfinder) digital camera or an interchangeable-lens digital SLR for serious photography? I faced this question and agonized over it for months. I wish I had come across this brief and very helpful article by Popular Photography Magazine (I'm not affiliated with them in any way):

[...]

The article compares five current-model EVF cameras: Canon PowerShot Pro 1, Konica-Minolta Dimage A2, Nikon Coolpix 8700, Olympus Camedia C-8080, and Sony Cybershot DSC-F828. It's a very easy read, and at the end the writers give you a helpful checklist for the EVF vs. d-SLR decision.

As for myself, I'm going with a d-SLR since I want 1) high-quality lens, 2) lens choices, 3) little to no shutter lag, and 4) accessory choices. Good luck!

I haven't been as pleased by a camera in a long time. The image quality is wonderful.
I might note that it takes time to learn the camera controls.
Although it is called a point and shoot, it exceeds that definition after becoming comfortable with it. There is so much packed into the little body that one must know how to use and handle the controls and menus to get the prints that are desired. Take your time, and you'll be delighted.
Oh. The low light problem only exists in auto mode.

When i initially purchased my 8700 in 3/04 it was one of few consumer grade 8MPs available. I preferred it to other offerings because of its small form factor and light weight, however others seem to feel this lightweight contender is not a serious camera. I do lots of hiking and wanted something light and durable to travel with me from Patagonia peaks to Saharan sands. Unfortunately the saharan sands did the camera in. The multi-element zoom lens is not well sealed and easy to get blowing sand in the zoom mechanism. I have had a nightmare dealing with Nikon to get the camera repaired-$275 and been waiting 2.5 months and still no repaired camera.

Few other peeves about the camera: The flash insists on popping up in low light even when disabled. Wish the time exposure bulb feature had a shutter lock and max exposure time is limited to 8s--I do lots of night photography. There is no direct way to attach filters without additional hood which then requires large and expenisive filters and still creeps into exposure area at wide angles. There are few accessories available and getting them from local Nikon resellers proved to be challenging. The battery life was dissapointing and required that I purchase 3 additional battery packs. Ergonomics and menu navigation could be much improved. I do primarily landscape photography and wish the camera was more biased towards wider angle lens.

Given Nikon's slow turn around on the repair, I am now forced to buy another camera for upcoming trip. This time I am buying Olympus E-300 Digital SLR.

BE ADVISED -- Nikon provides NO warranty coverage for the rechargeable batteries they provide with their cameras! I purhcased this camera and after approximately one month the battery would no longer charge. I called Nikon tech support and was informed that they could not help me -- I would simply have to buy a new battery. I escalated the issue to a supervisor who was even less sympathetic and totally unwilling to even meet me halfway. I therefore cannot in good conscience recommend any of their cameras.

I've used many digital cameras and when this one came out, I was poised to be thrilled. Read the reviews, tested it out in the store against other cameras, and bought it. I wanted a high-quality camera that shot RAW files and was more portable (i.e., no bag full of lenses to haul around) and versatile than my older cameras.

The thrill lasted for about three months. Then I started having some trouble stabilizing the image--even on a tripod I was getting blurring. At first I thought it was just me--too much coffee, maybe--but my tests are showing a definite focus problem.

The problem is (not surprisingly) especially acute in low light/high ISO situations. Focus is extremely slow--as long as 25 seconds--and the camera keeps "hunting." My old 4MP Olympus pocket camera easily outshines this 8MP camera that cost much, much more. Camera repair shop simply said, "Yes, focus is a problem with this camera," which wasn't much help.

What a disappointment! I've used Nikon film cameras for the last 25 years and love them. This is my first digital Nikon, and from what I've seen so far there's no comparison. If you have one (say, an FTN), keep it and buy a digital film recorder instead.

I do mostly studio work, especially macro. I was initially put off by the proprietary battery requirement for this camera, but I solved that problem with the purchase of the EH-53 AC adapter. Be warned, though, any camera that requires a proprietary battery can pose problems for the tourist/traveler. For such folks, I recommend a camera which takes good old AAs.

In any case, the 8700 is not a tourist camera. It has a tremendous amount of functionality which a tourist would not typically use, and few tourists have need of 8 MPX resolution.

You can take this camera out of the box, set the dial to AUTO, and start taking pictures immediately. But if that's your sole intent, this is not the camera for you. I consider the 8700 to be targeted toward the professionsl or serious amateur. I mention in passing that it took me almost a week to work my way through the user manual in order to make full use of this camera's functionality.

Ok, I am not stupid person when it comes to cameras. So here it is short and sweet.

Pros..

*Decent pictures when the camera works, but NOT FOR POINT AND SHOOTERS!!
*Many options for the advanced photo taker.
*Size is decent for Compact SLR
*Decent noise levels
*Allows the use of a Compact Flash Card
*Easy to contact and get ahold of customer service reps
* Good battery life
* Decent shutter lag
* very informative settings screen on top of camera

CONS

* Most shots have to be manually prepared for in the camera to
get a great shot. Pain when I want to just grab a candid
moment.
* Doesn't take NORMAL and Careful wear and tear well at all
* Lacks the backing of the warrenty for manuf. defects
* Not even close to advertise 8 megapixels
* Takes horrible pictures when the flash is not used. Have to
use the tripod... even in basic pictures unless the flash is
on.
* Cost (paid 695 plus 200 for CF Card) vs. life of camera 11
months.
* Have to spend hours on memorizing all the buttons you need to
push together to manually set the camera.

HERE IS A BREAKDOWN OF WHY AND HOW I RATED THE CAMERA

Warrenty and Repair Services:
0/5 stars Nikon doesn't stand by their warrenty and they are expensive to pay to fix cameras...They are slow to return camera back to you after repairs and return the camera with (literally, I counted) 15 peanuts and a 9 x 6 x 9 box. I shipped the box with the camera wrapped in bubble wrap and airbags. The box came smashed from the shipper on top of that. Oh, and pretty much no matter what the problem with the camera, they will consider it abuse...even manufacturers defects.. So prepair to pay if something happens to your camera.

Durability:
0/5 stars Camera continuosly broke due to manf. defects except once that was my fault, but even the slight mishap that I had should not have caused it to break.

Customer Service:
1/5 stars because you do get to talk to an actual person.

Overall Picture Quality:
4/5 stars because once you memorize all the buttons and dual action buttons you need to press to muniplate the camera, you will get fabulous pictures.

Camera Features:
4/5 stars.. Offers lots of features, but confusing menues to access them... partly because of all the different buttons you need to press to get to the menues

Included camera assecories and their performances:
3/5 stars. It would be nice to get a some type of memory with the camera. The software isn't all that great. The battery charger is awesome to have and it lasts as long as I would expect it to for a powerconsuming camera of this magnitude for me approx 100 shots (highest res.).

Camera performance:
3/5 stars. The camera has red eye issues, the flash tends to be too strong and causes many overexposured shots.. although this can manually be adjusted.. but again... sometimes even a professional needs a good point and shoot to catch candid moments. For the price, this camera should perform decently for both the auto and manual. If you don't use the flash, even the most basic pictures will most likely blur. So, you need a tripod for most non flash photos and you will need to use the timer feature or use the remote (not included).

This review is strickly based upon my opinion and experience with this camera. So the overall rating is 2/5.

I had such high hopes with this camera purchase. I researched it for months, reading everything I could get my hands on, every website, magazine etc. All had glowing reviews of this camera and I'm not exactly negating them. I am, however, a bit peeved at the fact that this camera is not for low light/indoor situations at ALL. (My experience anyway).
I have experimented "8 ways 'till Sunday", used every imaginable setting and without a tripod, it always blurs in lower lighting. If it's not blurring, it's casting an awful amber lighting across my images and all is lost.
On the other hand, Macro shots are mind blowing, all my natural outdoor light shots are fantastic. The panoramic program is so wonderful! The clarity I have been able to get (around 65% of the time)is astounding. You can see people's poors and eyelashes the size of your little finger!
Alas, the reading, the reading, the reading. I have had this almost 6 months now and I still have to refer to the darned manual...a LOT. And I also find myself Photoshopping for corrections (either blurring, color correction or SOMETHING).
No it's not perfect, no it's not horrible. I have taken fabulous shots MUCH easier with my little Fuji FINEPIX 2 megapixle that have been more exciting than this thing.... but it does serve it's purpose. IF you can coax it into cooperating.
So, finally... I'm searching for something else, but am not quite ready to hand this over just yet... I'm just mostly disappointed that this wasn't more user friendly and less... tempermental, so for this I am definatly middle of the road on this one.

I bought this camera for my wife. She loves it. The crystal clear shots are unreal! There is a problem with distance and blurry pics as reported in other reviews, but this can be over came by learning to use shutter speed and other finite details. The 12 Macro settings are nice for when you want to just point and click as well as AUTO and programed features. One feature we have used quite a bit, is the 1.8 lcd screen that is able to be moved and manipulated, it's great for looking over clift edges to take rock repelling photos

I really enjoy this camera and because I travel a lot it comes in handy. I was previously using a camera with much lower megapixels and the difference in the clarity in the pictures is startling. Another plus about this camera is that it is very user friendly.

On the negative side it is rather expensive. It is also very bulky and that can be an inconvenience if you travel as much as I do. I would not recommend for someone that simply wants to take better pics. It is only for the true photo hobbyist.

You are also a lot better off by this camera at Amazon as opposed to one of the web sites that offer a cheaper price. I made the mistake of buying it at a website that offered a lower price after a mail in rebate to post office. After I mailed in the rebate offer the envelope was sent back to me indicating that the P.O. box was no longer in use.

Positive features:
-Take great picutres
-Auto focus work very well
-Got a lot of features to offer

Negative features:
-Using 1G fast 80x recording speed compactflash still it pauses about 4 seconds to record the pic. when taking 8M pixels pic. Taking pic. less than 8M don't have this problem.
-Flash is not powerful enough to take pic at night, need to get an external flash.

Overall:
Having this camera since 2003 and still taking great pictures. Note the bigger the len is, it allows more light into the camera, the better the pic. resolution.

After much consideration and review of Nikon's new, lower-priced DSLRs, I am purchasing another 8700 to replace my stolen (alas) 8700. I have worked with Nikon's digital cameras for the last five years, consistently producing respectable photographs for use in lectures and as gifts for relatives.

If you are familiar with Nikon's digital cameras (for instance, you have an older Coolpix model), the menu set-ups will be fairly easy to adapt to. I do find the four side buttons on the camera to be a bit vexing--in moments of panic ("There is an elephant walking towards the car") one may forget exactly what has to be done with them.

My only complaints about this camera are its low ISO, which means you often have to use a flash for indoor shots; and its lack of a manual focus ring for very low-light shots.

The macro pictures are gorgeous, and the telephoto action shots I've gotten with it are clear, crisp, and blow up nicely to 16x20. I chose this camera over a digital SLR not so much for the $200 to $300 savings as for the size. It is small enough to fit in my handbag, which means that I can visit small villages in southern Africa without a big honking camera hanging off of my neck. The preceeding camera was nicked by a dishonest handyman--not stolen from me on the street. I know that some reviewers have mentioned durability problems, but I've had no trouble carrying it in my handbag and using it almost daily for eleven months.

If you can't afford the DSLRs but need a high-quality camera now now, or if you want the convenience of a camera small enough to fit into a medium-sized handbag, this is the camera for you.

I love my Nikon Coolpix 8700. I have taken wonderful picture as well as some crummy ones. But that is the great thing with digital film...DELETE and try again. Please take several shots of the same subject to make sure you get the best one no matter what camera you use.
I guess all digital cameras have taken plenty of crummy as well as good pictures.
I won a photo contest using this camera and I was so happy.
The battery life is short so buy several batteries, if you plan on using it alot. An get a 512 on up Compact Flash card.. 8 MEGA PIXELS uses lots of space on your smaller meg cards.
I find all digital cameras, including this one, can take poor night time shots. Not all the time, though. I've taken some good night shots.
You just have to practice with it. I've taken wonderful shots of the moon when it is full with this. You have to use night time landscape mode and a tripod.

The LCD Screen pivots out and around so you can hold it up high over a croud or anything in the way like a camcorder. I love that. However, the LCD screen is only 1.5 inches.

The macro mode is just fine. Keep back a bit from your subject.
If too close, you subject blurs. But again, I've taken wonderful macro shots with this camera.

If you buy one, you will like it just fine. Read your manual to get all you can from all the wonderful functions.

Good quality photos in outdoor lighting. Inside in low-light conditions I found them quite grainy unless I was standing very close to the suject. The worst problem was the shutter. It was WAY too slow! By the time the camera took the picture, what I was hoping to capture was gone. I got rid of the camera. It wasn't worth the hassle. I would have given this a 3 star rating, but this is a Nikon. Up until purchasing this camera I was a big fan of their cameras. What a disappointment!

I had high expectations for the Coolpix 8700 being a Nikon product. I have been very disappointed with this camera for the
following reasons:
the owners manual is almost impossible to
understand unless you are a rocket scientist.
The viewfinder is very poor quality and most of the time i cannot
see clearly the subject i am trying to photograph.
The time it takes to take a photograph is very slow and by the time the lens has opened and shut, the picture has changed.
I took some side by side comparison photos with my little Kodak 3.1 mp Easyshare DX 4330 which is several years old and was much much less expensive than the Nikon Coolpix 8700, there was no discernable difference in the quality of the pictures!
I find all the buttons on the Nikon confusing, and like another reviewer said, by the time you remember which one to use it is too late.
This is my first Nikon camera, but i plan on selling it and buying another camera from the Kodak Easyshare line.

I have owned my Nikon 8700 for almost two years and have taken over 7000 photos. It is a very good serious amateur's camera and might make a reasonable back-up for a professional phtotographer. The 8 megapixel resolution is enough for moderately sized prints, up to about 11 x 14, assuming no cropping.

The zoom lens is reasonably fast and quite convenient. Autofocus is normally pretty good, but as one approaches close-up shots with long focal length and moderate or low light, it fails quite regularly. One can see it 'hunt' right through the perfect focus and choose something not even close. Otherwise, the optics seem pretty good. The viewfinder is bright, but it is really small. It will indicate whether the subject is in the frame, but it will give only a hint of what the final result will look like. This puts it at a great disadvantage to real "through the lens" slr's.

It will produce very sharp images under moderately favorable conditions. There is only a little barrel distortion and vignetting at short focal lengths, and virtually no chromatic aberration. The jpeg compression, comes in three flavors: basic, normal, and fine. Basic is alright for small snapshot photos and shots of very smooth things, but it produces a lot of jpeg artifacts when trees are cast against the sky or other places where irregular edges contrast with the background. Fine mode has very little of this problem. In-camera sharpening works reasonably well, though even the lowest level will produce banding artifacts in high contrast areas. These will typically be visible only during image editing, though.

Color reproduction is generally quite good, but dark and midtone colors between blue and red - especially those between magenta and red - will often appear to be qualitatively very different in the photo from what they do to the eye. It is something that can be repaired in Photoshop, but anyone without a really solid image-editing program will be tempted to throw the camera against the wall. In other words - if you want this camera, you need to have an image editing program that allows adjustment of curves, and adjustment of hue and saturation for the six primary and secondary colors. My cheap Fujifilm 2800 is much more faithful with these reds.

With eight different modes of operation including landscape, flowers, indoor portrait, fireworks, and panorama, the electronics offer a good variety of modes. I use floral and landscape all the time, and they work quite well. Floral mode offers five zones that you can use for focus and exposure metering, making this a really handy mode for all kinds of close work.

Other modes are not quite as good. I tried nightime landscape last night. It was a full moon - one of those 'bright as day' nights. But the shutter did not stay open long enough to register any sort of an image, except for a ghostly dark gray image of some pure white surfaces. Similarly, the flash manages to make everything look ugly. This may not be a quality unique to this flash, but I would never use the flash except for cases of slight fill when the subject was 6-10 feet away. In its defense, there is a hot shoe and if I were not in the habit of using natural light for everything, I should have mastered this art by now.

Most of the controls are intuitive and easy to use. There is a bank of controls that naturally falls beneath the left hand when one is steadying the camera. These include the jpeg adjustment, self timer, and the flash mode selector. I have ruined many dozens of shots by accidently pressing one of these. Almost every photo-shoot in moderate or low light finds me waiting for the self-timer. And I went a whole shoot doing "basic" mode when I intended "fine."

The body is solid and it is mechanically quite sound. It fits the hands quite comfortably. Fit and finish are very soli. After two years of moderate use, the camera seems none the worse for the wear. Even the decals are in mint condition I have two batteries and a charger, and find that this is just barely enough. I also bought a 1 gigapixel card and would not reecommend anything less.

I have owned three film SLR's and I could never recommend trading to this camera from a film SLR. I have scanned a number of slides and am sure that this camera produces an image, that is is better than one from a 35mm, but one quickly misses the control one is used to shooting manually with an SLR. I bought this camera at the same time as a Pentax 6x7 medium format camera, and I find myself using this for almost everything because it is so much more convenient and portable. And only in the case of images that would be over 20 inches on a side is the advantage of high resolution one that makes the Pentax a better choice. For those serious about fine art landscapes and other photos with much detail, medium format film will still beat this camera or, probably any digital camera for detail. But for less than poster-sized pictures under normal shooting conditions, it is hard to beat this camera.

This is a wonderful camera, for me. I don't know much about photography and admittedly don't understand all the bells and whistles it offers but it does work great on mostly automatic focus. Only slght difficulties with a sort of slow shutter release requiring complete steadiness when shooting.

This is a wonderful little camera. I started my little addiction to Nikon with a $500 3MP point and shoot. I used it for a long time, this was when digital camera's first became everywhere. I decided to spend the money and get a GOOD new one. This one was perfect. I own a mini DVD camcorder and I'm sad that the quality of video isn't as good as the video from this camera! And easy to add to your computer. I am not a photographer, and this camera was very easy to learn. It has so much it can do, but other than video mine stayed on auto. I ended up upgrading to a SLR Nikon d70s and the size isn't much larger. I couldn't ever go back to a point and shoot because of the delay. When I got this 5700 it was $600 whereas I got my d70s body for the same price. I already had several lenses from my Nikon film SLR cameras. If you cant afford to get a SLR, I would absolutely recommend this camera. I sold mine to upgrade to the SLR and I miss it terribly. I would probably carry it around just to get little video's. But the pictures are amazing! If you want a sample of what these pictures turn out like I will gladly show you some of my snap shots, indoor and out. Just email me at ItsMelodie@aol.com and let me know. I highly recommend this camera though!

I'm a novice photographer and the Nikon 8700 was the first camera I bought
that was a step above the point and shoot Olympus camera I've owned for
over 6 years.

I had read many great reviews on this camera and it lived up to all those
expections, minus one: this camera is not ideal for taking sports or
action pictures. I was quite disappointed with the results after trying
to take decent pictures of my sons playing indoor basketball and outdoor
soccer. I finally did some research and learned that (like another
reviewer had observed) only digital SLRs have the responsiveness and
speed and capability to take action pictures. With the 8700, the shutter
lag speed is one factor- you click on the shutter release button but it
takes a portion of a second before the camera snaps the picture. I then
thought that with manual settings (shutter release priority mode)I could
correct that behavior, but no combination of settings changed or improved
the result. The result was the images coming out blurry. I was surprised
at this and thought it was a camera setting, but after doing some more
online researching I found out that (1) the major digital camera review
sites do not seem to cover any sports or action picture taking and
(2) a lot of users of the 8700 did report the same problems that I
encountered and (3) you can improve sports shots by learning some basic
techniques because some claim that no matter what camera you have, you
do have to apply some of these techniques, which is basically predicting
your shots and having knowledge of the sport in hand so that you know
when to prepare for your shots. In either case, those folks did confirm
the weak sports mode and limited capabilities of the 8700, which seem
to be more pronounced than other cameras.

As a novice user, the only other negative aspect of the camera is its
difficult access to the options, which is not intuitive, especially when
you don't use the camera a lot and you're under time constraint to take
a picture (of a sports scene) and don't have time to fumble around to
figure out how to change a camera setting. And I'm quite a technical
guy who had already read the user manual. I'm sure with time one would
be more familiar with the menu system and how to tweak a specific setting.
I guess the camera's strength of many features can be its own weakness.

Other than the two above mentioned weaknesses, I would have to say that
with the many still shots of landscape, people, and even animals, this
camera has made me look better than my novice photographer status. Along
with the Canon inkjet printer I have, I can print out better than the
lab photo quality pictures at home. However, I am looking for a true
digital SLR just to compensate for the lack of a decent sports mode in
the 8700. Better digital SLRs have either 3 or 5 fps for continuous
shooting modes versus the 8700's 1.5 fps, but of course they are in
two different classes and price ranges.

The 8700 is the successor to the 5400 and 5700, now with 8:1 zoom. It has all the features of a SLR with a LCD monitor but is smaller and lighter (no interchangeable lenses).

I've had a few digital cameras before this one, and I hated the quality of each and everyone of them. I was a novice (still am very much an amateur, so don't expect technicalities in this review) I was drooling over a Rebel that I can't afford nor, do I know how to use yet when I came across this one. I wanted a camera that took good crisp, clear shots, with good color. I have a digital scrapbooking business and my camera is a HUGE part of my business, so macro shots had to be good too. Plus, I scrap my own children's photos, using the fine setting on this camera, and they are perfect!

I have to agree with the sports shots and knowing the sport before hand because of the lag time, and you have to have the button pressed half way down focusing before the action you want to shoot occurs. Figured this out when my son does goal kicks in soccer or the other team is coming at him for a goal shot. I have to have it focused and ready before he goes to grab the ball.

I only use optical zoom and it is AWESOME. I can be sitting across the field from him where he is playing and still get a clear shot of him, and you can't tell how far I was from him. I was really impressed.

The color, I love the color. Like I said, I've had a few doozies for digital cameras, before I really learned what I was looking for in a camera, getting pictures that were either washed out without color or pictures that were almost yellow in color. I love the color that I get with this. My youngest daughter had the bluest eyes, and I would almost say this enhances the color of her eyes in a picture.

I can say now that I am a Nikon woman and when I can upgrade, I'll be staying with this company.