Nikon Coolpix S600

Print | Close this window

http://reviews.cnet.co.uk/digitalcameras/0,39030233,49297087,00.htm

Reviewed 3 June 2008

Reviewed by Lori Grunin

The Nikon Coolpix S600 is a very attractive-looking compact capable of producing pretty 10-megapixel photos. For around £190, does it have the features to back up its looks?

Design
True, it's a prettily designed camera. At 130g with small dimensions of 89 by 53 by 23mm and encased in an elegant slate-black brushed metal, it fits comfortably in a blazer or trouser pocket as well as at any social occasion.

The S600's scroll wheel is easy to control. The other four buttons -- mode, menu, review and delete -- are difficult to feel and their labels almost impossible to read

Despite its attractiveness, the S600's operational flow just annoys us. It fails to observe all the generally accepted conventions that help speed shooting with heavily menu-based point-and-shoots. For instance, every menu selection requires a confirmation, rather than assuming that the option you were on when you backed out is your choice. While on a typical competing snapshot camera it takes two button presses to switch from ISO 100 to ISO 200, with the S600 it takes five. Some competing cameras still require this, so only a partial demerit here.

However, to get out of the menu, virtual mode dial and playback, you've got to press the relevant button again; in contrast, almost every other camera quits those modes when you half-press the shutter button. In total, this just makes for a less pleasurable, occasionally frustrating user experience.

Only the macro, flash, self-timer and exposure compensation settings have dedicated controls -- as with most point-and-shoots, almost all shooting controls are screen- or menu-based. With a virtual mode dial, you cycle among setup, movie, audio recording, program exposure (scenes), a high-ISO auto and regular autoshooting modes. A menu button pulls up your shooting options: resolution/image quality; white balance; metering; shooting (single, continuous, best shot selector); ISO sensitivity (100-3,200), various colour options, AF area and AF mode.

Features
We suppose it doesn't matter that it takes multiple presses to access these options, since most of them are of little use. You really don't want to shoot at higher than ISO 400 with this camera, so forget the high ISO mode. We couldn't get the camera to produce different exposures with the matrix and centre-weighted metering; the missing spot-meter option usually makes a handier alternative to either one of those.

The best shot selector can be quite useful -- it shoots up to 10 photos as you hold the shutter down, then saves the sharpest of the bunch -- but it's also the sort of mode that you want to be able to toggle on and off more quickly than the camera allows.

The face-priority AF is too slow, as well as too erratic, to take seriously. As with most snapshot models, the auto area AF invariably picks the wrong subject; for example, in a photo of two people sitting on a bench, the camera chose to focus on the bench. As usual, we recommend that you eschew all the fancy AF modes and instead use centre AF focus and recompose. For selecting the appropriate subject, you're still faster than the camera.

Shooting speed (in frames per second)
(Longer bars indicate better performance)

Time to first shot

Flash shot-to-shot time

Typical shot-to-shot time

Shutter lag (dim light)

Shutter lag (typical)

Canon Digital IXUS 80 IS

1

3.5

2.1

0.7

0.4

Kodak EasyShare V1253

2

1.6

1.2

0.8

0.4

Nikon Coolpix S600

0.8

2.5

2.2

1.1

0.4

Sony Cyber-shot DSC-T70

1.5

3

1.3

1.2

0.4

Sony Cyber-shot DSC-W130

1.8

2.8

1.4

1

0.4

The S600 has a nice, wide, optically stabilised f/2.7-5.8, 28mm-to-112mm 4x zoom lens, but while shooting you may get frustrated by the lack of the telephoto reach you get with models like Panasonic's Lumix TZ series or, to a lesser extent, some of Sony's W series models. On the upside, the camera has a nice 69mm (2.7-inch) LCD that boasts a relatively wide viewing angle and is easy to see even in direct sunlight.

Performance
Although it's one of the faster Coolpix S series cameras we've tested lately, the S600 nevertheless has some sluggish aspects to its performance. It starts up in a flash -- only 0.8 seconds. Individual frames focus and shoot pretty quickly, as well: 0.4 seconds where there's good contrast and 1.1 seconds when there isn't.

However, shooting two frames in a row takes a sluggish 2.1 seconds, about the same as the similarly pokey Canon Digital IXUS 80 IS but far slower than most other competitors. On occasion, an hourglass actually appeared on the screen. Flash shooting doesn't add much time to that: it only jumps to about 2.5 seconds, and actually comes out faster than most of its class.

The middling-for-its-market burst rate of 1.3 frames per second, disappointingly short battery life plus the slow typical shot-to-shot time drags down the S600's performance rating. 

Image quality
That said, the S600 produces photos that are generally better than its competitors. It does particularly well in outdoor shots, where it renders saturated, pleasing and accurate colours. Highlights do tend to blow out, though. For low-detail subject matter in sunlight, you can probably go as high as ISO 800 with little image degradation; in low light, we'd keep that to ISO 400 or lower. However, indoor shots tend to look somewhat overprocessed. There's some distortion, but not more than we expect from a wide-angle lens.

We don't recommend going above ISO 200 with the S600; but at ISO 400 you start to see noise and some smearing, and by ISO 800 the smaller details are almost completely broken down

Unfortunately, the S600's photos are almost universally just a smidge too soft, and there's no way to control sharpness. Though the camera provides a decent low bit-rate movie mode -- 30 frames per second VGA at 1.3MB/sec -- you can't zoom while recording, which greatly limits its usefulness, and we noticed odd exposure fluctuations during at least one of our clips. 

Conclusion
While the Nikon Coolpix S600 is pretty to look at, fun to hold and will frequently produce nice photos, disappointing aspects of its performance and operation keep it from getting higher marks.

Additional editing by Shannon Doubleday