Durable and reliable, but you get what you pay for

The Nikon coolpix L11 is a small,inexpensive,compact point and shoot digital camera. It has 6 MP, which in my opinion,is the most MP you can get for that kind of money. I orginally paid about $120 for it 6 months ago and now I see that the price for this is below $100 at certain places. It also has a 2.4 inch LCD and 3X optical zoom. This camera has a lot of features and takes some practice and getting used to, so make sure you get to know the owners manual well.
This camera takes 2 AA batteries and I have not had any problem with them being used too quickly. I take a lot of pictures and I can usually go about 2 or 3 months before having to change them. I do recommend buying a higher quality battery for this as it seems to only function correctly when the batteries have quite a bit of power. What I mean when I say this is, you cannot take batteries out of your TV remote and use them for the camera. They should be new and relatively high quality.
It also takes an SD memory card. Without one, you can expect to get about 32 pictures if you set the image size slightly smaller than its original setting. If you leave it on the original setting, you can expect to get about 16 shots before you run out of memory.
The camera is easy to operate under normal settings. Just turn the camera on, choose your flash and point and shoot. There are 5 different flash settings, including red eye reduction, nighttime flash and no flash. I have had poor results when using this camera with no flash indoors. But the problem with that is, that if you are near a natural lighting source, such as a large window, you have to use the flash and there is too much light. But images turn out great in outdoor lighting.
The zoom is extremely easy to use as well. It is not an extreme zoom, but since it is an optical zoom as opposed to a digital zoom, the quality of the images turns out much better.
This camera also features a video camera with sound. It is also very easy to use. The sound quality is not that great, but it works well enough that you can watch the videos afterward and still be able to hear and understand what is going on.
This camera has many modes in which you can take your pictures. In the scene mode you can choose from many different submodes to assist in your photographing. For example, the Face Priority mode will actually help to "find" the face so that the person's features will be clearer. There is also a portrait mode, landscape mode, museum mode and many others, all with their own unique properties.
What I loved and what I didn't
I have to say this camera is extremely durable. My 2 year old sometimes steals it while I am not looking and tries to take pictures with it herself,and she has dropped it, stepped on it, thrown it and probably other things I don't know about and it has never given me any problems. So, its great if you have kids. But on the other hand, it has an awful lagtime that makes it very hard to actually photograph kids. Any time they move any part of their body, the picture either blurs or you end up getting a picture of them from 5 seconds before you actually took the picture, which in many cases, is not the action you were trying to capture anyway. That is probably my biggest complaint. But for the price of this camera, I don't know why anyone would really think they could get a whole lot more. 6 MP is plenty to have a decent 4x6 or even 5x7 photo and in natural lighting, the pictures are great. I have taken photos of my sister riding her horse and they turned out incredible. But indoors and in low lighting, the image quality can be quite poor. Keeping that in mind, though, I have used other cameras with similar specs and have encountered these same problems. You really need to spend another couple hundred if you want something that will really deliver in this area.
One thing I really love about this is that it has color options, such as black and white, sepia, vivid color, that you can use while taking the picture. And while you are taking the picture, you can try out each color to see what is best. I am all about photo presentation and this just takes out one less thing I have to do during editing, which is very nice.
My other complaint about this is that the LCD screen is not the best and can sometimes be difficult to see in bright light. The only way I have been able to deal with that is just to put my hand over it so it creates a shadow and it makes it a little easier to view.
I do highly recommend reading your manual and getting familiar with the camera before trying to take a lot of pictures with it. Simple things like changing the exposure, the ISO or even just the mode of the camera can make a huge difference in the quality of the image.
Overall, I don't think this camera is bad at all, especially if you don't have a lot of money to spend.I would even go as far as to say that at this price level, it is definitely one of the best cameras you can buy. There are better cameras out there, sure, but you can bet that you will be paying quite a bit more.