I bought a Nikon Coolpix 990 a week ago. When it was on, it made a fairly constant rat-a-tat-a-tat sound (seemed to be while autofocusing, but it does this alot). Sound was similar when zooming. I returned this one for replacement. The replacement arrived yesterday. Exactly the same sounds. You also can feel the vibration from the focus/zoom mechanism, even on the right side of the camera (the side opposite the lens). Is this normal? If so, why on earth would Nikon design such a cheap sounding/feeling and distracting mechanism?

-- Tom Martin (tbmjr@msn.com), May 06, 2000

Answers

when you have focus set to continous focusing in the menu and have your lcd on, when you move the camera around objects with different distances you should hear the camera constantly rat-a'tatting... just the autofocus mechanism going on... some people has claimed that the 950 made a less audible noise, and i know my coolpix 700 does make a softer autofocusing job... but it's not by far the most noisiest autofocusing camera... if you have ever used a slr with a cheap lens, like i have a canon 50mm f1.8 that only costs 70 dollars and my my does it make a racket! plus my slr makes a lot more noise when taking the picture (shutter click, film winding)

my solution to my 990 was to get it off autofocusing and focus point tracking... why i do it? focusing all the time eats up batteries and does unnecessary work for the focusing system so more things to break faster... and the focusing points never does point it to whereever i need it to point... if it was eye-focusing then it's a different story.. but i swithed it to manual and it's easier to focus that way...

-- Keat Lim (keatlim@my-deja.com), May 06, 2000.

Thanks. Specifically, the key is to use the camera in "M-REC" mode. Then you can control autofocus mode, monitor mode etc. The manual says that in A-REC mode you are only out of continuous focus when the monitor is off. But the camera automatically turns the monitor on each time you turn the camera on. In M-REC, you can control autofocus mode and monitor mode separately.

I still think the autofocus and zoom mechanism sounds cheap, but at least it now isn't constant!

-- Tom Martin (tbmjr@msn.com), May 06, 2000.