Nikon’s Applications and Utilities

If nothing else, Nikon has made sorting through the software for its digital cameras an interesting pursuit. Through the years, we’ve had various incarnations of programs with names like PictureProject, NikonView, and Nikon Capture. Some have been compatible with both the Nikon dSLR and amateur Coolpix product lines. Many of them have been furnished on disk with the cameras. Others, most notoriously Nikon Capture, have been an extra-cost option, which particularly infuriated those of us who had paid several thousand dollars for a Nikon dSLR, and found that we’d need to pay more to get the software needed for the camera.

Recently, Nikon has begun splitting their software offerings into separate programs that are sort of stand-alone products, but which integrate with the others. For example, if you bought Nikon Capture NX (or received it for free with your P7100), you found that the program didn’t really capture anything, as the previous Nikon Capture 4 did. If you wanted to operate the camera remotely, you needed to buy the off-shoot program, Nikon Camera Control Pro, which costs even more money.