I entered the digital world in the second half of 2002 by adding this compact prosumer camera to my photographic stuff. The first pictures I took and printed did confirm what I read in valuable sites such as www.dpreview.com, www.steves-digicams.com, or www.imaging-resource.com, i.e. that the 4500 is able to produce, together with its unbelievably small zoom lens, quality images, ranging from portraiture to landscape and close-ups, and even IR pictures.

However, despite the large amount of information available in the Web, I wish to share with you my comments on this nice camera, by focusing my attention on several aspects which are not often addressed in the reviews.

Image quality

The image below shows the high quality of the camera and the good performance of the JPEG engine, which allow to save files with 1:4 compression ratio (FINE option) that can produce high-quality 14x20 cm prints.

Basilica of San Paolo (Rome - Italy)

ISO 100 - 1/405 sec - f/7.5 - focal length: 7.8 mm

The use of the WC E 63 wide-angle converter allows to reduce the focal length of the zoom to 24 mm (35 mm film equivalent). The resulting images are slightly softer (in particular at the corners, even using intermediate apertures) and suffer, with the zoom set at the short end, a larger barrel distorsion.

EUR (Rome - Italy)

ISO 100 - 1/593 sec (+ 0.3 exp. comp.) - f/7.5 - focal length: 4.9 mm (with WC E 63)

Zoom performance declines at the long end. The image of Pescara has been taken with the zoom set @ 24 mm (corresponding to about 115 mm in terms of 24x36 format). I intentionally used a fast shutter speed and an aperture around f/8 in order to avoid blur and to reduce optical aberration effects. Nevertheless, the picture doesn't match, IMO, neither the sharpness nor the contrast of the images I took with the zoom set at the short end or at short focus distances (close-ups).

Pescara (Italy)

ISO 100 - 1/350 sec - f/7.8 - focal length: 24.2 mm

Perspective Control (PC) option

The Coolpix 4500 has a PC option that can be employed to correct converging lines, that form - for example - when a wideangle is used to photograph buildings with the lens pointed upwards. The option would allow to correct the apparent vertical perspective, thus making pictures taken from a low (or high) angle look as they had been shot from eye level. The 4500 manual stresses that PC option could produce a slightly "grainy", uneven appearance and that this effect increases with the amount of correction applied to the transformed image (which is stored on the memory card as an independent "TSCNxxxx" file, where xxxx is a four-digit number assigned by the camera).  However, the same manual does not warn the photographer of "zigzag" artifacts that can occur, as reported below.

The images below show the columns at the entrance of the Basilica of San Paolo, in Rome.

as-taken picture		image processed by PC option

Basilica of San Paolo (Rome - Italy - ISO 100 - 1/355 sec - f/8.4 - focal length: 11.1 mm)

The cropped areas of as-taken (yellow rectangle) and PC-processed (red rectangle) image are reported below. The zigzag effect is quite evident at the columns' borders and in correspondence of the railings. Therefore, the PC option did correct the perspective, but introduced an artifact, easily visible in a 14x20 cm print.

as-taken picture		image processed by PC option

go to close-up performance!

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