The Nikon Coolpix L100 is a medium camera with a 15X wide-angle optical zoom, equivalent to 28-420mm and a large 3" LCD with incomplete coverage (97%). The goal, it seems for the L100, is to be a comfortable-to-use ultra-zoom with minimal feature set, a zoom-and-shoot sort of model.

While the market of relatively small ultra-zoom cameras is not so old, it has gotten busier lately. The Nikon L100 is probably the biggest such camera and won't fit in any pockets but has a large comfortable grip and handles quite well. Contrarily to the larger ultra-zooms, this Nikon has the most basic feature set. There is custom white-balance but no control over ISO, no metering options and no exposure modes either. This puts image quality in the hands of the camera, which in good light is good enough but in low-light, you get what the camera gives you. The optics are good for this range, with noticeable softness mostly towards the end of the range.

Recent competitors of the L100 are the Panasonic ZS1 and ZS3 (aka TZ7 and TZ6) , the Canon SX200 IS and the Olympus Stylus 9000. Of these, the Canon SX200 is the most feature rich, including full manual-controls, the Nikon Coolpix L100 is the best. These Panasonic ones have ultra-wide 12X optical zooms but are also strictly point-and-shoot models. Both the SX200 and ZS3 also feature HD-movie recoding. For Olympus Stylus 9000 is by far the smallest (only 1.2" thick) but features a shorter wide-angle 10X optical-zoom compared to its peers.

See our full-length review for an in-depth look and images samples at all ISO sensitivities.