You don't expect much in a camera that costs $150 or less, but Nikon's new 8-megapixel Coolpix L15 (Click on the image at right for a closer look.) offers quite a bit for the money. (List price is $150, but it has been offered online for as little as $128).

Major features include optical image stabilization, limited face recognition (the L15 can keep a face in focus), a 2.8-inch LCD, and in-camera red-eye removal. A feature called D-lighting can rescue dark or backlit pictures by improving brightness and detail.

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To see what D-lighting does, consider this shot I took with the L15 of my colleague, Terry Sullivan. (Click on the image, below left , for a closer look.) His face is brightly lit by the L15's flash, but the background isn't so well lit.

Now here's a JPG of the same image (Click on the image at right for a closer look.)  that the L15 produced when I applied its D-lighting feature. Notice how the background is brighter. (So, unfortunately, is the gray in Terry's hair, which is the price he must pay for technological progress). When you use D-lighting, the L15 preserves the original image alongside the new one.

One feature expressly for novices is Easy Auto Mode, which the user manual says is an automatic mode recommended for first time digital camera users. When I turned Easy Auto on, the camera appeared to behave the same as when the feature was turned off.

I suspect from what little the user manual says about this feature, that turning it on limits which settings are displayed in the menu displayed on the LCD and, perhaps, automatically tweaks them to reasonable values for the shooting situation. Because the user manual doesn't fully explain this feature, it's hard to know exactly what it does.

Another way the L15 tried to make things easy is by automatically setting the ISO sensitivity based on the scene mode you set and the surrounding light level. The ISO range is from 64 to 1000. However, I couldn't find a way to see what ISO the camera was actually using or a way to override it. So when it comes to ISO, using the L15 requires placing your faith in the scene modes and camera's smarts.

We haven't tested the L15 is our labs yet, but Nikon's Web site for the U.S. says that the L15 can take approximately 160 shots using alkaline AA batteries.

—Jeff Fox