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April 05, 2006
[ NIKON COOLPIX P1 wireless camera ]
Price: $799
Rating: not rated–see below
The low-down: The Nikon Coolpix P1 is an 8 megapixel compact digital camera with a 3.5x optical zoom. The P1’s claim to difference is that it has wireless connectivity built in.
The Coolpix P1 looks like Nikon’s excellent Coolpix 5900 but sadly without the optical viewfinder. The 63mm LCD screen does not give a very accurate rendition of what is being viewed, either in preview or review.
On the plus side focus is quick and images are sharp and accurately coloured, except that the auto white balance is easily fooled in open shade. There is a reasonable degree of user control for the P1 and all the buttons and knobs are well laid out and intuitive to use.
The wireless connectivity promises to connect the camera to wireless networked computers and printers and should allow the camera to be controlled from the PC and to automatically transfer captured images.
Like this: The camera is not the smallest compact unit on the market and for a person with adult hands this is a bonus. We like the hand grip on the right of the camera.
Dislike that: We have not given the Nikon Coolpix P1 a rating because we could not get the camera to connect to our wireless network. The software includes a wireless connection setup utility which requires the camera to be connected to the computer via USB. (The connection cannot be via a USB hub but must be into a primary USB socket on the motherboard!) The computer recognised the camera attached and assigned it a drive icon in My Computer but the installation software could not detect the connected camera. dpexpert frittered away two days and several phone calls to the Nikon technicians and nothing would make the setup utility detect the camera.
We stress that this had nothing to do with the wireless connection – we never got that far!
Parting shot: Our conclusion is that the wireless connection ought to work and probably will on some computers, but not on ours. Nikon could not offer an explanation or solution. Our advice to anyone considering buying the P1 is to make sure that you can take it back if you can’t get it to work. We were not impressed.
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THERE IS A SMALL COLLECTION OF NIKON P1 IMAGES IN THE GALLERY >>
Posted by terry at April 5, 2006 01:18 PM
Comments
Managed to get the camera to find a Netgear DG384G without problems but it won't "connect on" to a PC attached to the router.
In "Nikon" modes, it never managed to launch PictureProject and in "PC" mode it shows up in "Windows Explorer" but doesn't managed to connect properly so no pictures "show up".
BTW, I've disabled the firewall on my PC whilst trying this and there is no internal firewall on my router. If someone from Nikon reads this, I've a computer programmer so I'll happily get some diags - just tell me what you need to see, including Ethereal trace.
Paul DS
Posted by: Terry at June 5, 2006 04:12 AM
Paul:
Maxwells, the Australian distributors of Nikon cameras, know about this problem. If you have a look at our review of the Nikon P1 you will see that we had exactly the same problem -- which, incidentally, we also had with the Kodak and Canon wireless cameras -- and we discussed it at length with the tech at Maxwell and it proved to be unfixable.
We also have a Netgear wireless setup and have had no success in establishing a connection between the wireless router and any camera.
Sorry to be a bearer of bad news, but if you do ever get it to work we would like to hear how you did it.
TL
Posted by: Terry at June 5, 2006 04:27 AM
Possible solutions.
1. You must use the Nikon wireless setup program to create the wireless profile from the PC that you want to camera to upload to. The Nikon protocol searches for the camera that created the profile. If you don't do this, the camera appears, vanishes, appears, vanishes from other PCs on the network that have the Nikon software installed. Confusing as hell!
2. If using a Netgear DG384G (and possibly others), beware that the router truncates 32 byte SSIDs to 31 bytes! This tripped me up for days until I spotted it. If you create the profile from a wireless enabled PC then the Nikon software learns the correct SSID but I did it from a wired PC (corrected to my DG384G wireless router) and entered the SSID by hand. The DG384G admin claims the SSID is 32 bytes but then only uses 31 bytes on the wireless link! Entering only the first 31 bytes into the Nikon setup program and all was well.
Blame Netgear not Nikon for the last one!
Paul DS.
Posted by: Paul D Smith at June 20, 2006 09:41 AM