Nikon Coolpix S3 review

Verdict:

Review Date: 17 Mar 2006

Price when reviewed: inc VAT

Reviewed By: Ben Pitt

Our Rating 2 stars out of 5

Review
Specs

Ultra-compact cameras such as Nikon's Coolpix S3 are great for keeping with you at all times, ready to immortalise those unexpected events.

Its aluminium body and recessed lens should survive life in a handbag or pocket, and the smooth finish and lack of extrusions aid portability. However, they also give the camera a certain soap-like quality, so we strongly recommend using the supplied strap to avoid dropping it.

The 2.5" screen dominates the back of the camera, but despite a decent smattering of buttons, user control is pretty limited. The lack of aperture and shutter speed controls is typical of an ultra-compact camera, but we were disappointed to see that there are no metering or focusing modes other than macro. A Face Priority feature is designed to recognise and focus on faces but we didn't notice it working. The camera usually takes two or three seconds between shots, but in low light the auto-focus mechanism increases this to around five seconds.

Image quality was disappointing. There was a lack of sharpness in photos taken with a shutter speed of less than 1/100 seconds, which suggests the compact design isn't particularly easy to hold steadily. More worrying is that the camera chose a small aperture and a 1/40-second exposure time in certain outdoor shots, again causing a slight blur. The wide apertures of other cameras allow shutter speeds of 1/300 seconds in the same conditions. Artificially lit subjects had an orange cast, although the Incandescent white balance mode fixed this. Image noise was higher than usual, and unacceptably so at ISO 400.

The need to grapple with white balance presets, the ill-advised automatic aperture settings and the leisurely performance limit this camera's suitability for impromptu snapping.

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