We've lived with the Nikon Coolpix P7700 for a long weekend now, and we've been steadfastly snapping through stacks of images to see how it performs. 

There's a lot to like upon initial impressions - the 28-200mm f/2.0-4.0 lens paired with a 12-megapixel 1/1.7-inch CMOS sensor has produced some sharp shots. The close-up focus is rather impressive too:

However, that wide aperture doesn't produce the prettiest of bokeh in all conditions. In fact, as in the sample shot were the highlights blow out in the sky, it looks downright ugly to us.

We scratched out techy brains and thought it could be down to heavy-handed JPEG processing, but even the raw file produced similar results - just take a browse in our image gallery below for the comparison shot (at 1000 pixels wide and actual size crops; Raw to the left, JPEG to the right of the line). We'll keep on shooting in all manner of conditions to see how the P7700 responds to all kinds of light.

Higher ISO settings aren't too bad either. Although colour seems to jump off a cliff at ISO 3200 - see the two pence coin, the cool colour cast is less present at lower ISO settings - the level of image noise, while certainly present, isn't offensive, and the shot still has enough "bite" to praise its sharpness.

When we first got our hands on a prototype P7700 it came without a battery and so it's only now that we've been able to get a proper play with Nikon's latest high-end compact. So far we're impressed - it's far quicker than its P7100 predecessor - but for the full story you'll have to wait for our full Nikon Coolpix P7700 review, including a more thorough image quality investigation, which will be arriving on the site this very week.