Nikon Coolpix S2500

As my grandchildren grow up it is important for us to be able to capture the special moments on camera. I’m not very good at photography and I am definitely a point and click person! I know that there are some fantastic cameras on the market but what is the point in having an expensive showy camera if you do not know how to use it. This camera was bought less than a year ago and it does exactly what we need it to.

==PRICE==

You can buy the camera for around £100, which I think is reasonable for a camera of this quality.

==THE LOOK AND FEEL OF THE CAMERA==

I like this camera because it is fun and it comes in an array of different colours. (silver, pink, black, red) We have one in black because my husband is a very boring man and bought this without my say so! I would have loved a pink one as it is a lovely metallic pink colour. The external casing of the camera is sturdy and looks very pleasant. The front is shiny black metal and the back is matt black with hardly any buttons to complicate things next to a large LCD crisp clear display. The 2.7” LCD screen is extremely sharp and assist you in creating the best possible photograph. Images can be viewed on here as a slideshow or you can flick through manually. You can zoom in on photographs and even crop them to some extent but on the whole we tend to use the computer for this. I find the camera really light and it is comfortable to hold. The shoot button is easy to locate on top of the camera and is easy to push down.

The flash on the camera is very bright although I do feel that it is very good at lighting up night shots and I sometimes end up with really overexposed pictures. I find this quite frustrating but I think that I have to resign myself to the fact that I am never going to be David Bailey! The flash has a few options such as auto, on, off and red eye reduction. These are easily toggled between by using the button on the back of the camera.

The camera has a 4 x optical zoom which is very average for a compact camera and all you can expect for £100. This provides a 35mm equivalent focal length of 27-108mm. It is sufficient for my usage as I tend to be shooting close up family shots rather than anything too fancy. The zoom button pops the lens out relatively quietly and on turning the machine off, it switches the zoom mode off. The camera has a li-ion battery to run on and works out so much cheaper than buying double A batteries. You can charge it up through the mains or through a computer and it does not take long to reach full charge although the battery does not seem to last very long in the machine and needs regular charging.

==POINT AND SHOOT==

The camera is so easy to use and the menu is simple and easy to navigate around. There are five shooting modes to choose from that make life easier. These include: auto, movie, smart portrait, subject-tracking and scene. These features are complimented by motion detection, anti-blur and vibration reduction. This is by far my favourite feature as I get really shaky hands. The more help the better! I like the fact that I can record short video footage on here and this is really good quality. It has a subject tracking focus that will keep the moving person in focus at all times and when filming excitable children; this is an excellent feature to have! Video is shot at 480p so it is very different to the 1080p that we are used to! Despite this, it is a nice little addition and is something that we could not do on previous cameras.

The camera is quick to set up and is ready to shoot in only a few seconds from powering on. On the whole I have really good quality pictures and tend to use the normal shooting feature with vibration reduction. I find that photographs taken in a well lit area are really impressive quality but the ones taken in darker areas are poorer quality. I took some photographs of the family outside in the dark and all you can see is a large pink blurry face rather than the person stood against the background. This is probably a reflection on my photography though! I will certainly try to improve.

There are features such as red eye fix and smile timer that are easy to find on the menu and help in creating those perfect pictures and I am still learning about what works best.

==OVERALL==

I like this fun little camera, it does not have much more to offer than any other camera compact camera in terms of features and specification, however it is good quality, sturdy and on the whole, fairly reliable.