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Our Italy vacation was the first big test for Herman (the Nikon 3100) and it performed magnificently. We’ve got some really great shots (I’m working on a small gallery - hopefully tonight it will be up) from it, and some incredible performance.

Overall, we shot 288 pictures (plus 8 rolls of print with my old Nikon FG). Batteries lasted an average 100 shots (minimum flash usage, minimum viewing of files), which means that the three sets of batteries we took lasted the entire trip with out the need to recharge them.

We also used both compact flash cards, with about 250 fitting onto the first card - a Lexar 12X 256MB. The Lexar card performed very well, with just a bit of noticeable slowdown as we neared 200 pictures. It slowed down to about the normal speed of our Sandisk 256MB card.

The Coolpix has several pre-selected modes and they all work very well. The museum mode got quite a bit of use, since we were in several museums and churches where you weren’t suppose to use a flash. The flash, by the way, doesn’t do you much good in a huge church. The effective range is only a dozen feet or so and you end up with an under-exposed image. The museum mode, on the other hand, gave excellent exposure. The trick was to keep the camera still, since it used a slow shutter speed. (I did take my monopod with me, but we didn’t carry it around much because of it’s length.)

Our only real criticism of the Coolpix 3100 is that there are almost too many exposure modes and it can be hard to remember where they all are. The top dial has a few preset modes (portrait, landscape, etc), each of which has varieties. There is also a Mode selection on the dial, which has some menu options that are similar to the preset modes. A little confusing, but manageable. And the more we use it, the better we get.

Overall, I’d give the Nikon Coolpix 3100 a 4.5 out of 5.