Nikon Zoom 600 AF
Party camera, the camera that shows up to save the day when the aggregrated attentino span of everyone is only slightly longer than 3 seconds. Built-in flash and auto-focusing are necessity, zoom is good-to-have.
This camera originally belonged to my aunt and was given to me when she learned of my interest in film photography.
My experience with this camera is short as it survived for around 0.55 roll (even shorter than the Sports 35) before getting its motor-driven lens barrel locked up and becoming unusable.
As far as a compact point-and-shoot goes, Nikon Zoom 600 AF checks all the boxes. Auto-exposure, auto-focusing, built-in flash, a 38-110mm zoom, DX code reading, auto-winding, date imprinting, and even a fake panoramic feature (adds black border to a standard frame). The industrial golden brownish appearance with a group is nice.
As a person owning so many fully manual/semi-auto cameras, these feature are very attractive for a party camera. However, it failed to promote itself to the condition of a real party camera because it breaks and isn't as cool looking as the other one.
The flash on this one is very strong, I would recommend shooting at least 1 meter away from the subject to avoid oil on their faces appearly too oily. Even though the front and back elements have fungus spots, color rendition and sharpness are very good for a point-and-shoot.
It's justifiable why fully mechanical cameras, despite their ages, are more expensively sold on the market. Say Nikon FM2, those last forever in the first place, and there exists parts and spare copies to be cannibalized for parts and people know how to repair. However, for a camera like point-and-shoot that includes complex electronics, once they die they die forever.
The only thing one can do when one dies is to give it a proper burial, or cry, or both.
