Nikon Coolpix S4

Reviewed October 2005

Image Quality

The Coolpix S4 makes no pretence at being something other than an easy to use point-and-shoot. Its most "advanced" mode is the Auto mode, and even it provides only a few user controls — seven in the menu to be exact — over the way the image is captured. Moreover, of these only three directly affect the way the camera captures the image: white balance, exposure compensation, and sensitivity, the others being more tools to maximize picture taking.

Aside from this simple Auto mode, all the other shooting modes of the S4 are Scene modes that place even these few options under the camera's control.

The attractiveness of the Coolpix S4 over other numerous point-and-shoots is the fact that it is equipped with a 10X zoom. The zoom has a focal length of 6.3 to 63 mm, the equivalent of a 38 to 380mm zoom on a 35mm camera. This means that when the zoom is set to its maximum telephoto setting, objects appear to be 10 times closer than they appear when the lens is at the wide angle end.

(In the wide angle image shown at left, the yellow rectangle indicates the area captured by the zoom at 10X, which is shown below.)

Without optical stabilization, the downside of this magnification is that when the zoom is at its maximum telephoto position, camera shake becomes exaggerated and can cause a blurred image unless the shutter speed is fast enough to prevent it.

This reality is recognized by the camera and, should the photo be blurred, a warning appears superimposed on the monitor to indicate that the image is blurred, and to offer the choice of saving it or not.

Photos taken with the S4 reveal that the lens causes some barrel distortion at the wide angle end, but no overt pincushion distortion at the telephoto end. However, a chromatic aberration can be seen in some telephoto shots, appearing as a purple fringe along the borders of strongly contrasting areas.

On the other hand, exposures are generally very well metered, and colours are consistently life-like, albeit with some shadow noise, even at the lowest sensitivity setting of 50 ISO. Nevertheless, at the next two higher sensitivity settings of 100 and 200 ISO, noise only increases marginally. And, since the S4's Auto ISO mode covers from 50 to 200 ISO, it can be used without much concern that noise will become so visible as to distract from the photo.

With indoor shots, the flash's reach is a tad limited, but if the Auto ISO setting is used the flash's effectiveness can be maximized. Moreover, exposure compensation is also available to brighten up a photo but, as the shutter speed is slower, the camera should be held steadily when a positive compensation is used.

While the simplicity of the Coolpix S4 should be appealing to many potential purchasers, the restricted image quality choices should be taken into consideration as well, as they place a limit on the the camera's best available image quality.

At the highest resolution, only 2 compression levels are offered. All other image sizes are limited to a single compression level which, in our view, is too strong, as it is generally more than an 8:1 ratio.

Still, with images that are preset at 300 dpi, the S4 is able to produce clear prints at a 9 x 7 inch size and which, if printed to a more common size of 4 x 6 inch, appear as sharp as those made from less compressed images.

The S4 can easily produce good images, particularly when there is plenty of light, which prevents camera shake from blurring photos, and should attract the attention of those who are looking to purchase a simple-to-use camera with a big zoom.