Just bought a Nikon Coolpix 950 and it returns fuzzy pics in low light and of images containing small items at a distance of app.10 feet or more. (group of trees, etc.) This happens in both manual and auto focusing modes. Can't figure out why. Any ideas? Thanks.

-- Thomas L. Carter (westley123@juno.com), September 12, 1999

Answers

In manual mode, you may just be in-between the fixed focus steps the camera provides. Most digicams will have problems with autofocus in low light though - they use a contrast-detection process that relys on the signal from the CCD, and that has a hard time when there's not enough signal there to work with. The reason you may be noticing fuzziness in manual mode at low light is that the lens is running wide open, and hence has reduced depth of field. You might try aperture priority mode, and select a higher f-number to get more depth of field (as long as there's enough light to still get a usable exposure.)

-- Dave Etchells (web@imaging-resource.com), September 16, 1999.

I hate to be the bearer of bad news, but the Nikon cp950 (and the Olympus C2000Z, and several others) suffers from a malidy common among todays crop of megapixel cameras known as 'purple fog' (I would have called it blue fog) and which shows up most often in scenes with variagated, high contrast subjects. This blue 'haze' can be seen in the 'Resolution' image in the image comparison section of this site. Go to the bottom of the image and look between the numbers 3 and 5 of the striated bars, and you will see many 'extra' dim blue pixels.

-- Fred Hammack (fredth41@hotmail.com), September 18, 1999.

Thanks Dave and Fred. Before I read your answers, I gave up on the Nikon cp950 and bought an Olympus C-2000. It has none of the focusing problems of the Nikon. Great, crisp images at any distance, in any light. At least, so far! --TC

-- Tom Carter (westley123@juno.com), September 18, 1999.