NIKON COOLPIX L32 -- how to get decent pictures from one

My Fuji Finepix AX655 with lens stuck open -- it took terrific pictures when working.

If you have one, always use fresh AA's. Mine still works as an SD card reader -- so all is not lost. :-)

Recently my Fuji Finepix AX655 went belly-up. Well -- the closest thing to it: I was out taking some pictures with it and the lens locked up.

The camera gave me an error message, and no matter what I did, the lens remained stuck. The lens was stuck open, it wouldn't focus, and it was impossible for the camera to take any pictures.

One of the reasons I bought the Fuji was it took AA batteries. I just don't care for rechargeables.  Unfortunately, some cameras can lock up if you turn them on or off with low batteries in them. What happens is the lens will sometimes lock into place when the batteries run low. Your screen will still light up. But the lens is locked in place. And a "low battery" may actually be lower in charge than it appears on your battery meter.

When I got the Fuji back to the house I put in fresh alkaline batteries -- the lens was still locked, and wouldn't budge. I blew canned air into the crevices around the lens -- the lens was still locked. I tried all the tricks I found on the web, including taking the camera apart and blowing canned air all around -- no change. Still locked.

I even took the case off the camera to try and blow canned air around the lens without the case being in the way. No dice. The lens still was stuck.

My Fuji Finepix AX655 digital camera is now a Fuji AX655 SD card reader and paperweight.

I have an old Canon AX520 (which I bought at a thrift store) that I use frequently. When batteries are low with my Canon it simply won't turn on -- or it automatically turns itself off. Thankfully, it hasn't locked up on me. Apparently (hopefully) the firmware prevents that.

I like my old thrift store Canon, but I don't like having just one camera -- I'd rather have a spare.

Nikon Coolpix L32 -- a great snapshot camera -- just use the 'Scene' button.

ENTER THE NIKON L32

So I bought another camera. As anyone who may have read my earlier posts knows, I got a Nikon Coolpix L32. I got it at a local box store for around $100.

With my Fuji, everything seemed automatic: the camera would set the shutter speed and light adjustment for whatever light level -- bright sun, dusk, morning, haze, etc. -- and I always got good pictures. It truly is a 'point and shoot' camera. The only time I messed with the settings was to turn the flash off, or once when I took a night picture of the half Moon and Jupiter -- where I used the 'night scenes' setting.

This is a night shot I took -- of the half moon and Jupiter -- with my Fuji, using its 'Night' setting. It was the only time I used an actual setting with the camera. The rest of the time I just left it on full auto, and switched the flash off. Very simple. With my Nikon, there's an extra step.

I thought the Nikon L32 would be the same. Nope -- not quite that simple!

At first I tried some photos during daylight. The results were O.K.

Then I took some late afternoon photos, just before dusk. Blurry, most of them.

Then I took some morning photos, while the sun was still coming up. Same results. Blurry, most of them. Some of them were really bad.

I thought: what happened to the focus? What happened to the anti-shake that is built in to the camera?

ALWAYS USE THE 'SCENE' BUTTON

I was about to take the L32 back to the box store until I discovered the key to getting decent pictures from an L32: the "SCENE" button. The Quick Start Guide calls this the "Shooting Mode" button, but on the camera it says "SCENE".

It's a little green button just above the big multi-directional function button on the right side of the camera.

I pressed it. I got a menu.

There are all sorts of settings: Portrait, Landscape, Beach, Snow, Sunrise/Sunset, Night, Dawn/Dusk, etc.

This is the Scene Menu. As you can see, there are about 15 very useful light settings, from 'Portrait' and 'Landscape' to 'Beach', 'Sports', 'Snow', 'Party' (I think that's an indoor light setting), 'Sunset/Sunrise', 'Dusk/Dawn' (the one I use the most because there is a lot of low light outdoors in the Seattle area during Fall, Winter and Spring) -- and several others.
 *The "Night Landscape" setting also works very well in grey sky, low daylight conditions.*

Basically these settings tell the camera how to adjust for different light levels.

The straight automatic setting that many of us use with digital cameras just doesn't work well for most light levels using a Nikon L32. You have to press the SCENE button.

Being that most times when we're out with our camera it's during a morning, or an afternoon, or maybe indoors, or out in bright daylight, it really isn't that big a deal. It's just one extra button click.

After I took 15-20 shots in the morning and 90% of them came out great using the Dusk/Dawn setting, I was sold on keeping the camera.

Since then, I have discovered that the Sunrise/Sunset, Dusk/Dawn, and Night Landscape settings are similar in that they are all similarly sensitive to low light -- but they each emphasise a slightly different color tone to the pictures.

 PLAYING WITH THE LIGHT EXPOSURE BY POINTING THE CAMERA

One other trick I discovered is that the Nikon, like most snapshot cameras, will automatically meter (brighten or darken the exposure) depending on where you point the camera. So -- if you want a dramatic sunrise, for example -- you point the camera up towards the sky, where it is lighter. The camera will darken the exposure, and the sunrise will seem more dramatic.

A sunrise picture I took the morning of October 6th, 2015, using the Nikon L32. I aimed the camera up towards the sunrise. The clouds looked more dramatic that way.

If you want the lower area of the picture to be lighter so you can see the yard, bushes, etc., point the camera down towards those darker areas. The camera will lighten the exposure. Press the shutter button part way, and then move the camera back up towards the sunrise or sunset. The light metering will hold, and although the sunrise will be less dramatic, the lower part of the picture will be lighter.

I took this photo maybe 15 seconds after the one above on October 6th. The ground area is lighter in this picture because I pointed the Nikon L32 downwards and held the shutter button about halfway down, which seems to lock in the light setting. So -- the lower area of the picture is more visible -- the sunrise isn't as dramatic, though. It's a bit bleached out.

With this sunrise picture, taken October 5th, 2015, I pointed the Nikon L32 down towards the Trail and held the shutter button partway to lock in the light setting.

The main reason I'm putting this all in a blog post is because there really isn't much information online on how to get good shots from one of these L32 cameras, and frankly, many people who bought these cameras at the same box store where I got mine complained online about poor pictures.

BATTERY METER SORT OF HELPFUL, BUT CAMERA KNOWS WHEN BATTERY IS LOW

One morning a week or so ago I tried to shoot a picture with the Nikon, and the batteries apparently were too low for using the flash. Instead of locking up the lens, the camera said "Batteries Exhausted", and shut down. Good sign!

It happened to me again this morning. I took two photos and the battery meter -- a tiny icon in the upper right corner of the L32's screen -- showed what seemed to be a full charge.

When I pressed the power button about 10 minutes later I got the "Batteries Exhausted" warning message again. The lens didn't even try to come out of the camera.

The battery meter is fairly sensitive, but you get three settings: full charge, 'half' charge (which shows up just before the camera refuses to turn on), and "Batteries Exhausted".

The camera is also apparently designed to shut down if it's too cold (which will affect the batteries).

Considering I experienced a lens lock up with my Fuji, I have more confidence that Nikon figured out a way for the camera to just not do anything if it senses the batteries are too low to operate the lens. If this tendency holds, that is a very good sign. I'd rather have a camera that refuses to operate than lock up the lens.


Hopefully, my new Nikon will never become a paperweight like my Fuji has.

DON'T MOVE TELEPHOTO PAST THE LITTLE HATCH-MARK FOR BEST RESULTS

The only other glitch this camera has is the telephoto. If you press the telephoto button all the way to the right and hold it there, the telephoto function will eventually switch from physical telephoto to electronic zoom. In other words, the Nikon tries to make the camera pretend there is more telephoto available than there really is.

 An example of 'Electronic Zoom' -- you move the telephoto control past the hatchmark on the L32's screen, the 'electronic zoom' feature takes over. This picture was also taken when I hadn't understood the light metering of the camera, so it would have been a bit blurry anyway. Just a more extreme example.

On screen there is a little hatch-mark about 3/4 to the right when you use the telephoto. If you pass that little hatch-mark, you are no longer extending your telephoto -- the camera is electronically zooming into the picture, and it will be grainy. For the best shots using a telephoto, don't take it past the little hatch-mark on the screen. 

I took this sunrise picture using the 'Dusk/Dawn' setting and also the telephoto function -- I kept the telephoto to the left of the hatchmark and got good results.

This sunrise picture was also taken using the telephoto and 'Dusk/Dawn' setting (maybe the Sunrise setting? -- I don't remember. They're very similar).

I realise there is some information on the L32 out on the 'net, but finding any instructions online that were useful was very difficult, and unfortunately I couldn't download the extensive PDF manual on my computer. So I decided to go ahead and post some info on the L32 for anyone who has bought one of these cameras and hasn't had much luck in getting the quality of photos they expected. Hopefully this post will help someone.

A recent picture of the Cedar River in Autumn colors, Late October 2015, taken with the Nikon Coolpix L32.

FULL ON AUTUMN.

Moving away from cameras, it's full-on Autumn here in Seattle now, which means the hills are mostly greenish-orange-yellow (green from the fir trees, orange from the bigleaf maples, and yellow from the cottonwoods), and it's 11C / 50F and raining out most of the time.

Our weather was great throughout most of October, but after Halloween we've had a lot of rainy periods. Halloween itself was pouring rain. :-( Not many trick-or-treaters this year.

I have some Autumn pictures I took earlier in October which I will put up in a blog post in the next few days. 

Have a great picture taking day,
CC

PS -- As I said earlier in this post: Anyone who has a Fuji AX655: They're fine cameras but MAKE SURE YOUR BATTERIES ARE ALWAYS FRESH! It's a great camera -- very easy to use. But watch those batteries!

ADDENDUM, 2019:
As Google got rid of Google+, a couple comments from readers disappeared. One of them was a question from a reader asking me "Which setting is the best to use overall?"

I use the "NIGHT LANDSCAPE" setting the most, as light levels here in the Seattle area are often low during later afternoon or early morning. The NIGHT LANDSCAPE setting will also work during the day, strangely enough. If the sun is out bright, I switch to LANDSCAPE, which seems to be the standard bright daylight setting.

Even when using the NIGHT LANDSCAPE setting, I usually have the Flash switched OFF. Most times, it isn't really needed.

Sometimes I will use the SUNSET or SUNRISE settings -- they are similar to the NIGHT LANDSCAPE setting, except the color sensitivity is altered a little -- sort of like Kodachrome and Ektachrome slide films were back in film days. You usually can see the difference in the LCD display.

ELECTRONIC ZOOM: IT DOES WORK
ALSO: I have found that the Electronic Zoom does indeed work, and works well. It seems to depend on lighting. I have taken very sharp pics using the Electronic Zoom while photographing trees, flowers, and other subjects, both in my back yard and farther away. So L32 users, give the Electronic Zoom a try. You will see it sharpen in the LCD display.

Here is one of the pics I took with the Electronic Zoom, during one of the orangy sunsets we had two summers ago when there was haze from Canadian forest fires. This, I think, was when I first noticed the Electronic Zoom worked OK:

Thanks again to all who have read this article. It appears to be called up by people a lot while doing searches. These NIKON L32 cameras are handy little cameras. I still use mine several times a week.

Here is a pic of the river in snow last Winter.:

Peace,
C.C., 8-20-2019

ADDENDUM, April 5th, 2024:

After a frustrating photo session, where I decided to use my L32 after it had reset on me (the batteries had died, and I hadn't used the camera in a couple months), I learned the hard way that there is a definite difference between the "NIGHT LANDSCAPE" and "NIGHT PORTRAIT" Scene settings.

With the NIGHT LANDSCAPE setting, you can take pictures in almost any lighting, and by zone metering (aiming the camera at a lighter or darker area and setting the lighting that way, then aiming the camera at your subject) you can take good pictures in daylight, cloudy daylight, or dawn or dusk very easily. With this setting, the FLASH is always OFF. In most cases with NIGHT LANDSCAPE, you don't need the Flash, though. NIGHT LANDSCAPE is probably the most useful of the Nikon L32's settings.

With NIGHT PORTRAIT, you can NOT turn the FLASH Off! It's impossible. Trust me. I learned the hard way. Flash is useful at times, but it drains your batteries. I have a dead pair of new AA batteries because of it.

Do NOT confuse NIGHT LANDSCAPE with NIGHT PORTRAIT.  The semi-useful NIGHT PORTRAIT icon is in the first row of "Scene" icons. Don't use it unless you want to drain your batteries quicker. NIGHT LANDSCAPE -- the Very Useful setting -- is in the SECOND ROW of icons.

The SUNSET and DUSK/DAWN modes are also equally useful. As I mentioned in the article, they are like Kodachrome and Ektachrome -- you get different color highlights. With both of those settings, the FLASH is always OFF. Like with NIGHT LANDSCAPE, you probably won't need it.

PS. The manual isn't really ultra clear on much of this. There is a chart that shows the different settings and how they work, but overall, the manual is as clear as mud about a lot of this stuff.

- - - - - - - - -

I also made one small edit to one of the captions here -- changing "Night" setting to "Night Landscape" setting, and added "Landscape" in another part of the text, so that no one else has to go through what I just went through, after my frustrating attempt at getting good photos late this afternoon.

Looking through the manual, this camera was packed with interesting features. You can edit pics with just the camera. Remarkable. Nikon did put a lot of effort into coming up with a good product when they came up with the L32.

Just make sure you get the SCENE settings right, hey? :-)

C.C. 4-5-2024