The Nikon CoolPix 990 is nice for a bunch of reasons, mostly because it can either meet or beat most of the stuff that my old Olympus OM-10 35 mm SLR used to let me do. It has great contrast depth and accurate color, and can be switched over to full manual mode, which includes the ability to control the F-stop, shutter speed, and a virtual ISO setting.
The next photographed spinjam photo session in Baltimore will be using a tripod with the manual settings, automatic blur reduction and the three second shutter delay (acts as a sort of electronic remote shutter release) with fixed 2 second exposures. If the spirit moves, we may do some more movies too.
I used the automatic blur reduction in the 4 second shots. Those pictures could be done with a 35 mm camera only if you had a tripod underneath it because nobody in the world can hold a film camera still enough for 4 seconds and still get a crisp picture. All those shots were taken in my shaky hands with the camera taking care of the rest.
Plus, the 40 second QuickTime movies are just COOL.
Average price on eBay is about $700 for the basic unit, which is about the same as the street price on PriceWatch right now. Worth every damn penny, though.
I've got some black and white 1 and 2 second exposures from the Blast Furnace party up on the web. The bottom of page 6 and most of page 7 have good examples of what I'm talking about.
http://vees.net/pdf/blastfurnace/
WICKED 
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