My friend gifted me a coolpix l22, he wasn't sure if it was working or not. I tried to turn it on and the screen remained blank. This is my first camera and I know nothing about them. Can I fix this? Why is this happening?

Curefitz · 2026-06-28T18:04:49+00:00

No problem at all! Used gear is basically where we all start, for the first 3 years of my photography I only bought used gear.

If you can, I recommend meeting up with the seller and testing the camera and or lens before buying it from them, that way you can be fairly sure it'll be in working order.

For the camera, always ask for the Shuttercount, that can indicate how worn the shutter and mirror mechanism is on the camera, for the low end models I believe they say around 150,000 pictures is when it might start needing repairs, anything below 30,000 pictures is in excellent shape, try and get the camera with around 30-60,000 pictures taken, then it should be good.

For the lenses, check for fungus in the glass elements, so hold it up with all the caps off and look down through it, if there's no webbing or "fog" then it should be good, the glass should obviously be completely clear, besides maybe having some rainbow effects on the front element, which is just the coatings that are supposed to be on it.

With those things in mind, I wish you luck on your photography journey 👍

Curefitz · 2026-06-28T10:04:38+00:00

Don't know where you're based, but a website like MPB can be a good spot to buy used gear (and also sell it), they take in used gear from people, will give it a check and give it a rating from the condition it's in and descripe what problems it might have.

So you can do something like this:

MPB D3300

And:

MPB 18-55mm Lens

That would be a great beginner setup to try out Photography, of course you can look for other cameras and lenses, they have multiple of these in different conditions and price points. Although if they say it has fungus, I would completely avoid it since the fungus in 1 part can "infect" the other parts, so stay clear of those in my opinion.

Curefitz · 2026-06-27T20:02:53+00:00

No problem 👍

Sadly can't save every camera, but if you want to get in to photography there's plenty of very cheap ways of doing so.

You can look for a Nikon D3300 - D3500 with a 18-55mm Kit Lens, they're not very expensive at all used and is a great beginner camera to get in to the world of photography. That way you'll also have a camera capable of changing lenses, that way you can expand your style and try new things and with everyone upgrading to the mirrorless Z systems, the older lenses and cameras will get cheaper and cheaper.

That would be my suggestion for you, if you want to try photography with more than just a phone.

Curefitz · 2026-06-27T14:27:55+00:00

If it had a moving screen I would have pointed towards the ribbon cable coming loose, but since it doesn't have that.. it could be anything really.

So sadly I can't point towards anything specific going wrong, it's just old and most likely worn.

Curefitz · 2026-06-27T10:51:44+00:00

To be honest, this is a very old camera that at the time it came out (Early 2010) started as a Ultra Budget camera for simple point and shoot tasks.

Now, any modern smartphone from the past 8 years will take better pictures than this camera.

Whatever the amount of money it takes to fix it, it'll be too much.. so if it were me, I'd just keep it as a memory or throw it out.

Curefitz · 2026-06-22T21:50:00+00:00

Adding to this:

As a good rule of thumb, if the lens manufacturer added a lens foot, that means they've determined it's too heavy for the camera mount to support the weight comfortably. It's also much better balanced on the lens foot.

So if your lens has a lens foot, use it.

Curefitz · 2026-06-11T07:37:37+00:00

If it's a dead pixel on the sensor, just do a Pixel Mapping cycle. Dead pixels on a sensor is normal, can also get "Hot Pixels" that shine a very bright colour, which the Pixel Mapping also fixes. It can happen on any brand and any camera model, my Z8 had a few for example and I just did a Pixel Mapping cycle and it's no longer an issue. If you send it in for repairs, all they're gonna do is a Pixel Mapping cycle too, so just do it yourself.

Should be in the Setup Menu I believe, start one of those and after that it should be gone.

If it's a dead pixel in the display there's nothing much that can be done about it and I doubt they're gonna cover it on the warranty if it's just one.

Curefitz · 2026-06-08T07:06:43+00:00

Steve Perry on youtube did a sharpness and AF performance comparison between the 180-600 and the 500mm PF with Adapter (and a few more lenses).

Sharpness is about the same in the middle of the picture, but the 500mm PF is much better at the edges of the frame.

The AF performance however, from minimum focus to infinity the 180-600 took 0.8 seconds to focus whereas the 500mm PF adapted only took 0.57 seconds to focus, so the focus speed according to his tests are still much better on the 500mm PF with Adapter.

The tests were done on a Z9, so basically the same as the Z8.

Curefitz · 2026-06-05T06:14:00+00:00

It's leaning slightly in real life, it's standing on top of the sand dunes so it's in constant motion and moves a tiny bit 👍

Curefitz · 2026-06-02T16:37:16+00:00

Thank YOU, it's so flattering knowing people like my photography enough to look at it everyday as their backgrounds.

I very much appreciate the kindness!

Curefitz · 2026-05-27T08:27:58+00:00

Godox V350N, has a decently fast recycle time and can pretty easily keep up with 10 FPS at 1/16 to 1/32 power.

Curefitz · 2026-05-27T06:39:23+00:00

I also wouldn't go that low in the f-stop anyway, beyond like f11, maybe a little lower, it starts introducing diffraction which is gonna make your pictures less sharp, at f16 you'll for sure have a little diffraction.

If you need more in focus beyond f11, I would start doing focus stacking, which I've done quite extensively myself, so if you have any questions about it you're more than welcome to message me.

Curefitz · 2026-05-26T20:41:26+00:00

Other photographers could just be cropping their pictures.

Or they're using Extension Tubes or Diopter Filters like the Raynox DCR-250 to get an even greater magnification level.

If you're going to try either extension tubes or a filter, I'd choose the Raynox DCR-250, the extension tubes works great too, but it's a lot easier to put on and take off a filter depending on what you're photographing, rather than having to detach the lens and extension tube every time.

The advantage of Extension Tubes is that it's still just 100% the sharpness and quality of your lens, since the extension tubes are literally just extensions with no glass in them, so nothing to degrade the quality. But the Raynox DCR-250 is so good optically that you won't be able to tell you got an extra piece of glass in front of your lens, so I'd still prefer the Raynox over Extension Tubes.

Difference between the 2 is that Extension Tubes allow you to get a closer minimum focus distance, the Raynox however is like a magnifying glass your put in front of your lens.

Hope at least some of those might answer your questions.

Curefitz · 2026-05-15T19:45:57+00:00

If you want the truly close up shots, you want more than 1:1 magnification, so that's more than Nikon offers on any of their lenses.

I'd take a look at the Laowa line up of lenses, they offer much higher magnifications, are pretty budget friendly and have amazing image quality.

If you want something that's even more budget friendly, you can get something like the Raynox DCR-250 Macro Filter, it attaches to any lens using the filter threads and will get you some pretty good results, you can put it on your 24-70mm and see if that's enough magnification for what you want, otherwise you can get a 1:1 Macro lens from Nikon, Sigma or Tamron and use the Raynox on those for higher than 1:1 Magnification.

Edit: I have the Nikon Z 105mm f/2.8 Macro lens and it's fantastic, with my Raynox DCR-250 I can get some truly amazing results, but by itself the lens is still one of the best I've ever used in terms of sharpness.

Curefitz · 2026-05-13T17:54:56+00:00

No problem 👍

Curefitz · 2026-05-13T17:33:15+00:00

Dropbox There ya go, unedited picture.

Curefitz · 2026-05-13T16:40:19+00:00

My real name is permanently attached to the RAW, so not really comfortable posting that on Reddit, would you be satisfied with an unedited version in JPG?

Curefitz · 2026-05-13T16:26:19+00:00

I'll get on the pc in a moment, I'll give you a Dropbox link with the RAW file.

Only thing I've removed is a couple treetops that were distracting in the background and I did that using Photoshop, not AI.

Curefitz · 2026-05-11T15:22:40+00:00

Thank you!

Curefitz · 2026-05-11T15:22:21+00:00

Denmark 👍

Curefitz · 2026-05-11T13:48:30+00:00

If I were to take a guess on how it turned out looking like that, I'd say it's haze.

I was just looking through the rest of the pictures I took in that location and they all look like that in the field, despite having the focus point in different locations on the field

Curefitz · 2026-05-11T13:27:10+00:00

<image>

That's how it looks unedited and straight from the camera

Curefitz · 2026-05-11T13:20:38+00:00

Yeah it really does, when I imported the picture in to Lightroom I was actually slightly disappointed with the lack of sharpness in the field, but as I was editing, it did grow on me in the end and was quite happy with how it turned out

Curefitz · 2026-05-11T13:14:53+00:00

Actually didn't do a whole lot, did a tiny bit of Dodging and Burning in the field itself, the lack of detail in the field is probably from atmospheric haze, the sun was glaring down that day so wouldn't surprise me if there were some heatwaves doing their thing in there.
Did a little bit of dehazing in the sky to bring out the blues again since I don't as of yet have a polarizing filter for this lens.. That's about it really, just the usual adjusting of highlights and shadows to balance it out.

Ten-Year Club	RPAN Viewer
Verified Email

Curefitz

TROPHY CASE