White balance and colour
Given that the target market for this camera is ‘beginners’, most users are likely to stick to auto white balance. On the whole, this setting is accurate enough, if a tad on the cool and neutral side. For example, in sunny conditions I find somewhere between the cool rendition of AWB and warmer rendition of the sunny preset is best.
Image: In this sunny scene, there is a marked difference in the warm, sunny WB preset and the cooler AWB
All the white balance settings can be tweaked, although a quicker method for precise colour is taking a manual white balance reading. This is achieved in the same as on any other Nikon DSLR, via the main menu, which is a little slower than some other systems. A single custom reading can be saved at any one time, while more advanced Nikon models allow up to four readings at any one time for quick access.
‘Picture control’ can be found in the main camera menu only, and it offers six colour modes, with the camera set to standard by default. In this mode colours are bright and punchy, especially the greens in a landscape. All the colour modes can be adjusted for sharpening, contrast, brightness, saturation and hue, while the monochrome setting offers filter effects, which is fun. Being fussy, I often tweak the colour of images straight out of the camera to get them just right.
