Before I dive into this review, I have a confession to make — until I got my hands on Nikon's Coolpix 4600, it'd been nearly 4 years since I'd had any quality time with a "real," non-disposable camera. And I've got to say, I don't think I can go back. This compact cam was easy and fun to use. Its controls were intuitive — in fact, I didn't even have to crack open the owner's manual. And with the help of the bright 1-13/16" LCD, I could always get a shot that I loved.

The form factor

The 4600 is lightweight (only 4.6 ounces without the batteries), but it felt solid and sturdy. It's a small camera, about 3-1/2" by 2-1/2", and just 1-1/2" deep. For me, that was a little too thick to fit comfortably in my pocket, so it generally stayed on my wrist or in my purse.

The small size worked in my favor — I have small hands, so I found it comfortable to hold. One of my friends, who's accustomed to larger cameras and who has larger hands than me, sometimes found it a little trickier to get a good grip on. I found that it was hard to keep it steady if I used the LCD monitor to frame my shots, but had no problems when I used the optical viewfinder.

Memorial Day memories

I didn't have a memory card when I used this camera during Memorial Day weekend, but I could still fit about fifteen 4-megapixel shots on there, which was just about right for my 3 days of casual shooting. Mind you, I took a lot more than 15 pictures altogether, but I also deleted a lot of what I shot. That's one of the perks of the LCD screen — I only kept the images I wanted.

Charlottesville, VA group The Beetnix stole the show Friday night. The stage lights behind them were too bright to get a good shot in automatic mode, but the Back Light mode did a great job.

Power

The 4600 uses standard "AA batteries" — a plus for those who don't want to worry about keeping this cam charged. However, that convenience could add up to quite a lot of money spent on batteries over the years. My advice — invest in some rechargeable AAs, and keep a spare set of them on hand when you're taking the 4600 out for a while.

Best Shot Selector let me get a great up-close picture of this flower on a breezy day.

Lookin' good

The LCD screen made a great learning tool. I could immediately see my snapshot, and decide if I wanted to keep it, or take it again and do things differently. The automatic mode worked well in most situations, but I found that the exposure presets sometimes did a better job. For example, the Back Light mode was perfect for taking pictures at a Friday night concert. In automatic mode, the bright stage lights threw off the rest of the picture, making it dark and shadowy. The Back Light mode compensated for this, resulting in a more even, accurate image. The 4-megapixel pictures I took had a lot of rich color and detail, making for beautiful 4 x 6 prints.

Drawbacks?

The only problem I encountered was shutter lag. Shutter lag is the term loosely used to describe any kind of delay between when the camera's shutter button is pushed and when it takes a picture. In digital cameras, it's often a result of the camera's processing assessing the scene, setting the exposure and white balance, and then snapping the photo. Like most digital cameras, the 4600 exhibited some shutter lag. While it was frustrating at first, I did get better at compensating for that delay. One option was to hold down the button half way and let the camera finish its processing, then press the button all the way down when I saw a shot that I wanted. The other was to use the Best Shot Selector (BSS) mode. This setting let me take a series of pictures (up to 10), then it saved the shot with the most detail.

Even though I was tripped up by shutter lag at first, the 4600 was a fun cam to have around and took colorful, detailed shots.

Bottom line

Having this enjoyable camera around, I found myself taking more pictures than I normally would, and liking it. Despite the shutter lag issue discussed above, the 4600 performed well over all. It's a great choice for photography newbies (like me) and is also a good compact, secondary camera for serious shutterbugs.

Pros:

• small size makes it easy to carry
• nice-looking pictures
• pre-set exposure settings were easy to figure out and very useful
• wallet-friendly price

Cons:

• shutter lag took some getting used to