TECH SPOTLIGHT : Features on Nikon Coolpix S710 make taking photos easy to set up, review
Posted on Monday, January 12, 2009
I'm back!
After a lovely vacation just in time for Christmas, I have returned to a plethora of new technology. Between the pre-Christmas announcements and the big gadget shows last week of the Consumer Electronics Show and Macworld, the new products are lining up.
So I figured I'd start with one of the pre-Christmas items, the Nikon Coolpix S710.
Nikon is one of the top camera manufacturers, and the Coolpix has proved to be a good line of
point-and-shoot cameras in the past. But would the S710 continue that?
What better place to test it than at a few soirees.
The S710 is a simple, compact camera, small enough to fit into a pocket. It has a large, 3-inch screen on the back that makes it easy to set up photos and review them. The screen replaces a viewfinder.
The camera has about 42MB of internal memory. With 14.5 megapixels, that doesn't go very far. Luckily, it also has an SD card slot to add memory.
The lens on the camera is retractable, which is good for protecting it when not in use. However, the slightest touch as it's coming out, and you'll get a lens error. It retracts, and you basically have to turn the camera off and back on to get it working again. It's good that it's protected, but I don't think it has to be so darn sensitive.
The camera is fairly easy to adjust, once you figure out a little quirk. There's a Mode button and a Menu button on the back. Now, you would think the Menu button would let you adjust the camera's settings. Actually, it adjusts the settings of the current setting. It's the Mode button that changes the camera's main settings. So hitting the Mode button means you can change it to Scene. Then, once it's back in shooting mode, you have to hit the Menu button to change the scenes. In some cases, this was convenient. In others, it was far more complicated than it needed to be. Frankly, if I had to make a quick change to get a photo, I'm not sure I could move through the modes and menus fast enough.
That said, the camera does have some impressive modes and settings. For one thing, it includes settings for aperture priority, shutter priority and full manual shooting. I haven't seen many point-and-shoots with those features. They're usually reserved for the more expensive SLR cameras.
There are several impressive scene modes. The S710 has many of the standards - portrait, night shot, sports, panoramic, landscape. But it also has scenes for beach or snow, sunset, fireworks and dusk/dawn. One of my favorites is Museum. This scene mode turns off the flash and automatically brightens the photo.
If the scene is changing around you, then you might try Scene Auto Selector. This mode automatically adjusts to the scene setting that best fits the photo subject and lighting.
The best new feature here is the new Smile mode. In this mode, the camera will wait until it detects a smile on the face of the photo subject, then it snaps the picture. It will continue snapping photos when a smile is detected until you stop it, by going into photo review mode, for instance. The Smile technology wasn't as accurate up close, but it did fine from 3 feet or farther away.
The best test for me was a simple side-by-side test. So I tested it in medium mode against my Panasonic DMC-FX55 camera, which has always produced excellent photos for me.
I took identical pictures of a friend's silver Christmas tree. I first examined the pictures screen to screen. It appeared that the Panasonic's picture would be better, based on what I and several others saw on the screens.
As it turns out, the screens didn't do either photo justice. Especially where the Nikon was concerned.
The Nikon photo was crisper with more accurate color. Part of that probably is the megapixels. Though I tested the Nikon on medium mode to be closer to the Panasonic, the Nikon's 14.5 megapixel capability is going to create more detail than the 8.1 Panasonic. But the color of the photo was because of Nikon's technology.
I've seen several cameras, both larger and smaller megapixel-wise than the S710. The color varies from camera to camera, usually. Often, I've found that cameras will either show too much yellow in a picture or too much blue.
The S710 is among the most accurate I've seen. It had neither too much yellow nor too much blue. The colors are excellent, the pictures are sharp, and the technology packed into this little camera is extremely impressive.
The S710 may have a few quirks here and there, but overall it's an excellent camera. It's loaded with features that offer abundant ways to get the perfect shot. It has modes that will make a true photographer happy, yet is simple enough for amateur shutterbugs to use easily. The S710 continues Nikon's tradition of exceptional Coolpix cameras.
As great as this is, it's only the beginning. There's plenty of new tech waiting in the wings. We'll just have to see what pops up next.
Melissa L. Jones can be reached via email at mljones72@me.com.
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