Nikon Coolpix S6

Reviewed May 2006

Image Quality

The Nikon Coolpix S6 is clearly designed to be easy to use: a point and shoot camera, it even includes the Cool-Station in the kit, making it as simple as possible to transfer photos, recharge the battery, and configure the camera.

Being fully automatic, the S6 only offers limited user-controls. While in many modes the camera allows the use of exposure compensation, only the Auto Shooting mode provides control over the white balance, the sensitivity, and the possibility of boosting colour saturation.

For all else, however, the S6 is in charge, whether it is metering, aperture selection, or shutter speed. Likewise, the S6 provides only a very limited control over the compression applied to images.

The Coolpix S6 only offers one high quality image setting: 6M*. All other image sizes are permanently linked to a specific compression level. At this setting, the compression ratio can range from a low of approximately 5:1, to a high of 12:1.

Generally, the highest image quality setting of the Coolpix S6 appears to hover around 7:1, and this relatively strong compression occasionally diffuses some of the finer details in the image, softening the image overall.

The more dots per inch, the smoother the image; and with a preset of 300 dpi, the S6's 6-megapixel images print out perfectly at a size of 9.38 x 7.04 inches (23.84 x 17.88 cm) without having to adjust any settings.

With the S6, noise is almost absent at the 50 and 100 ISO levels, and minimal at 200 ISO. At 400 ISO is it more readily visible, but images captured at that sensitivity remain quite good when printed to a size no larger than 4 x 6 (10 x 15 cm).

On the optical side, the Coolpix S6's image are free of any chromatic aberration over the entire focal length range of the zoom, and reveal no major distortion, either barrel or pincushion, at any point.

Indeed, images captured with the S6 are normally very well exposed, especially when the subject is well and evenly lit, and either over or under exposure of parts of an image are relatively rare thanks to the effective Matrix metering.

Nevertheless, when confronted by a subject that has a strong contrast, for instance a scene that contains some dark or light absorbing subjects on a bright milky sky, the metering appears to favour the darker areas of the frame, allowing some of the lighter areas to become a bit overexposed.

On the colour side, the Auto white balance regularly produces natural looking colours that are not overly saturated.

Shots captured using the small flash reveal its limitations rather quickly, even if the sensitivity is set to Auto ISO. At best, the flash is able to provide light for up to 2.5 m (8 ft), but only with the zoom set to the wide angle end, which has the advantage of the biggest aperture. With the zoom at its maximum, the aperture decreases to f5.4 and the reach of the flash drops to a bit more than 1.2 m (4 ft). Moreover, the S6 can experience difficulty in focusing while in low indoor light, even with the AF assist.

One of the features of the S6 is its built-in wireless capability. It is worth noting here that although the software supplied by Nikon to configure the camera to operate wirelessly is quite user-friendly, setting up the camera to function on a wireless network still demands some basic understanding of how wireless networks and LANs function, and knowledge of the terminology used.

The Coolpix S6 may well attract the attention of technophiles because of its flat and elegant design, its high resolution 3-inch LCD monitor, its 6-megapixel resolution, and in particular, because of its cutting-edge wireless capability. But, by the same token, we feel that the focus given this model may well be too much on technology. For, while it is capable of turning out good photos, it offers little room for growth, or experimentation, with what should always be the primary function of a camera: photography.