I own this camera for two weeks now, buying it as a replacement for a 5-year-old Canon S400 (4MP) as the battery is dying, and it was not that good when new either to consider a replacement. The first few pictures I took from the L18 disappointed me but I gave it the benefit of the doubt citing my inexperience with Nikon products. After trying to like it for 2 weeks, I gave in! While I do not know the relation between this and the L14, I have to agree with most of the low rating reviews on the L14, and perhaps more. Here are my overall impression with limited testing:

1. Slow shutter speed: from the time you fully press the shutter button (after focusing) to the time the camera clicks to the time it actually captures the picture is long, very long. In the first few pictures I moved the camera thinking it was done only to have the wrong frame captured. This, albeit irritating, I can get used to. But trying to take kids' expressions can be challenging. Not to mention if you ask someone else to take your family picture while on vacation etc.

2. Un even focusing: 7 people lining across the width of the frame, only the middle three are in clear focus, it degrades from there. This is both with no zoom and 1/2 zoom, Auto mode.

3. Washed out color: I spent a lot of time testing indoors, as this would be the most common use for us, though a few outdoors pictures did not look right when the sky and clouds are a part of the scene. For indoors, it seems over-exposed with muted colors. I tried setting color to Vivid and/or reducing Exposure Compensation, the only two settings I can find that may affect this outcome, which only slightly improved the image.

4. Noisy: not audio but video. If you open the picture with some viewer at full resolution you will know what I mean. If you have some other camera to compare, try taking the same/similar resolution.

5. Miss or near hit: to sum it up, I went to a function, took a lot of pictures indoors, all well within the rated flash range but only 50% of them were acceptable, as in you can make out who is who and what is what. None I would even attempt to print and I had a huge disclaimer when sharing those to people who requested.

Make no mistake, all pictures looked really good when viewed on the 3" LCD, perhaps that is where they should stay. On a scale of 10, if I give my antiquated S400 a 7, the L18 deserves a 2. Perhaps I should rate it one star instead!

My wife and I just recently replaced our Sony DSC-W5 (5 megapixel) camera with this one, and here are our impressions so far:

1) The Anti-Shake AE is something new for us, as the DSC-W5 didn't have it. Actually, we would get blurry pictures all the time in low-light situations with the DSC-W5 (which did not have Anti-Shake AE), and the new Nikon L18 does not seem to have as much trouble as the old camera did. Low light pictures seem to come out great.
2) This camera removed red-eye in the camera AUTOMATICALLY. You don't know how much of a time saver this is! My old DSC-W5 took crappy pictures when we turned on the red-eye protection, and the L18's pictures are MUCH better with the anti red-eye.
3) This camera does a better job of focusing on people than my old DSC-W5 did. It was pretty impressive to see multiple focal points on the easy-shoot mode. The focus was spot-on.
4) The colors are bright and vibrant. Much more so than my old DSC-W5.
5) The screen on this camera is HUGE. We love the sharpness and brightness on it.
6) It supports the new SD-HC cards. That means we can put the new 4GB and 8GB cards in it, and aren't limited to just the 2GB ones.
7) The Video capture (640x480 VGA) takes great, sharp AVI video captures. Great for those times where you don't have your camcorder available.
8) There is some limited internal memory in case your memory card gets full!
9) You can have any picture come up on the startup screen. So we took a picture of our name and phone number, put it in the internal memory, and set it as the start up picture. That way, any honest person that finds our camera has the info to return it.

All in all, this is no SLR or any other high end camera, but it does well what we need it to do - capture our four children and the wonderful moments in their lives.

...and I'm talking about April sun, not July/August. This is ironic, considering the graphics on the camera packaging implies this Nikon Coolpix L18 camera is perfect for outdoor/poolside shots. I had to return this camera because my husband left it on a chair in our shaded yard one sunny day a few weeks ago for about 20 min., and immediately afterwards a greasy spot appeared inside the lens. Any photo taken after that showed the semi-transparent splotch.

I was just as well. The indoor shots were more often fuzzy than not, and it seemed impossible to perfectly time pressing the button to take action shots - the camera was always too late.

The in-camera edit functions did work well, as did the red-eye compensation. I didn't expect much from the video function, this being a camera not a camcorder, and the video was no worse than expected. I thought battery life was fine, and the 16-shot continuous burst mode was probably my favorite feature. I had no problems with the included software - in fact, the software was surprisingly full-featured.

I should also mention this camera was very poorly packaged. The camera body was packaged outside the accompanying box in a blister pack. The LCD screen was completely covered by a sticker the same size as the screen - yes, an actual sticker, not statically charged film- which was impossible to peel off without using a fingernail or some other pointed object to lift at the corner, causing some minor damage to the inside corner of the screen before we had even taken the first photo. The logic behind placing that sticker there baffles me.

The pictures has a lot of noise in them. I'm returning it tomorrow. Guess you get what you pay for!

I just bought two of these for grad presents for my twin daughters. I wanted to take a few pictures just to make sure they would be all right. I took pics inside, outside, at a few different settings, close up, zoom. They looked fine when reviewing them on the camera but when I downloaded them onto the computer THEY WERE AWFUL. Even just a normal close up picture is horrible. They are so grainy I can't believe it. I would expect better quality from a disposible. I will be returning these and looking at the Canons.

I wish I could give it "NO STARS." You will be very disappointed. I returned it to Ritz Camera when I came back from a trip. The time it takes for the camara to take another picture.. the moment has been lost. A very, very long time to take the next picture. The pictures were horrible! Just plain horrible! I'm going to stick with my husband's Canon Proshot 870. A much better camera.

This was purchased to replace another digital camera that was broken. The key feature sought was the large LCD screen. The features of this camera surpassed our expectations. This camera is used primarily for online auction photos of clothing and jewelry. The close up photos are very good quality. It downloads the photos to the computer in about 1/2 the time of the previously used camera. The zoom is not as strong as the previous camera, but for the intended use it works perfectly. The memory card purchased was significantly lower in price than for the other camera. Very nice product for the price.