Nikon Coolpix L6

As you might expect, the camera's specs won't blow you away, but for its price, they're not bad. It has a 6-megapixel CCD sensor; a 3X optical, 38mm-to-116mm f/3.2-to-f/5.3 zoom lens; and a 2.5-inch, 115,000-pixel LCD screen. According to Nikon, the L6 can shoot up to 1,000 images on a pair of lithium batteries; the company even includes a pair of Energizer AA e2 lithium batteries with the camera. If you use alkaline AAs, the battery life drops to 400 shots, but that's still very impressive for a point-and-shoot camera like this.

The L6 is comfortable to hold and, with all its controls on the right-hand side of the camera, one-handed shooting is a definite possibility. Nikon makes use of the thickness of AA batteries to fashion a subtle grip on the L6's right side. Though certainly small enough to fit in a jacket pocket, the L6 has some heft; it weighed 5.4 ounces, with batteries and SD card, on our lab scale.

While they're not numerous, Nikon did include a few features. Unlike with the FE series, you can choose from a handful of white balance presets or set your own manual white balance. You can also choose various color modes, such as cyanotype, sepia, and black-and-white. The best shot selector mode in the L6 captures up to 10 images when you hold down the shutter and then saves only the one that the camera thinks is the sharpest. Unfortunately, you can't manually select your ISO. Nikon says it covers ISO 50 through ISO 800, and the camera chooses what it deems best for any given situation. Since noise always increases as ISO increases, we'd rather be able to choose a lower ISO occasionally.