Anna's Ventures: Testing Out My New Camera

I recently invested in getting a new camera that would be suitable for all my Bali travels. I always rely on my iPhone for my photography in Bali but I decided that I needed to get something that was more travel-appropriate. I chose the Nikon AW110 based on its reviews. It's a great compact camera that is waterproof, shockproof and has WiFi capabilities, making it easy to transfer photos from the camera onto your smartphone or tablet, which was essential for me as I do all my writing on my iPad.

The AW110 is a 16 megapixel camera that has a 5x optical zoom, is 18 metres waterproof, shockproof up to 2 metres and has built in GPS (I'm yet to test this out) and WiFi. For me, it sounded like the perfect camera to take travelling.

I was so excited when it arrived in the mail last week, and after being very busy since then I finally had the time to test it out. I took it out to my backyard and had a few test shots on my cat while she was rolling around in the sun and a couple of close-up shots of some flowers. I took photos with both my new camera and my iPhone taken at the same time.

Left: iPhone, right: camera

You can see that the camera lets in more light and saturates the colour more, which I love. The settings are all very easy to use and as well as the usual auto mode, it's got lots of other settings to suit all different types of conditions. If you're not one to manually select the settings, the auto mode is great as the camera adjusts to the light conditions and automatically selects the most suitable setting to get the best shot possible.

I took my camera to Cottelsoe Beach to test the camera out in different weather conditions. I was quite happy with how the camera performed. It was quite a cloudy day and while my iPhone failed to take bright photos despite this, my camera managed just fine. The photos were bright and the colours turned out better than the photos taken with my iPhone.

Left photos: iPhone, right photos: camera

The WiFi is also easy to use and is probably the thing I'm most impressed with. For years with my old cameras, I always thought that cameras need to have WiFi capabilities to save the trouble of taking out your memory card, plugging it into your laptop, manually transferring the photos and what not. All you need to do with the Nikon AW110 is download an app on your phone or tablet that Nikon has made specifically for its cameras, turn on the camera's WiFi, connect your device to the camera and then you're free to view the photos and transfer the ones you like directly onto your device.