Nikon Coolpix 3100 - After charging the batteries twice, the nib securing the battery-compartment door snapped off. When I returned it to the high street department store I bought it from, they agreed the same had happened to their demonstration model & agreed to exchange. Great cameras, let down by simple weakness.

The Nikon Coolpix 3100 is a fantastic little digital camera for it's price range although me and one of my friends have found that the batteries run low really fast and this becomes quite annoying when you need to take that picture you have always wanted.

Overall, the Nikon Coolpix 3100 is an excellent small digital camera that takes good photos in "normal" conditions. A pure point-and-shoot so don't expect too much.

All functions accessible by menus. This is a real pain; and difficult to remember where everything is.
Default is flash on auto and must be turned off in dark conditions.
Camera so small it is difficult not to tilt the camera when taking photos.
In dark conditions, the camera under-exposes the pictures so one must manually (and by eye) over-expose the photo by as much as 1 stop.

Takes excellent photos in uniform moderately bright light.

The camera is over-sensitive to bright parts of the picture. One has to minimise the amount of sky in landscapes or everthing else comes out badly under-exposed.

the view finder shows an excessily small part of the picture; so much so it can only really be used in emergency (like when one can not see the LCD screen.

The batterys that came with my camera where useless and I had to replace them. The camera is particular about what card it uses. The first two I used failed (the one supplied is too small to be of much use).

Camera small and light and if these are important to you, this is a major feature.