Nikon Coolpix S2

Okay, first the essential details...

Dimentions: 9.2cm x 2.2cm x 5.9cm
Weight: 0.1kg
Flash Memory: SD memory
Internal Memory: 12mb
Pixels: 5.1 Megapixels
Lens Aperture: F/3.0-5.4
Mid Focus Range: 30cm
Focal Length: 5.8mm- 17.4mm
Optical Zoom: 3x
Digital Zoom: 4x
Display: LCD, 2.5", colour
Microphone: Built in, electret condenser, mono

Im ...
...on holiday/ out drinking/ arty MySpace poses etc, as I expect many others probably will do so I will give my views based on my experiences in these areas.

Design
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I have found the camera's design to be most excellent. The camera itself is constructed wholly out of a lightweight metal, meaning that it is very robust if you were to throw it in your bag (not sure about dropping it, I have dropped it once ... more

Okay, first the essential details...

Dimentions: 9.2cm x 2.2cm x 5.9cm
Weight: 0.1kg
Flash Memory: SD memory
Internal Memory: 12mb
Pixels: 5.1 Megapixels
Lens Aperture: F/3.0-5.4
Mid Focus Range: 30cm
Focal Length: 5.8mm- 17.4mm
Optical Zoom: 3x
Digital Zoom: 4x
Display: LCD, 2.5", colour
Microphone: Built in, electret condenser, mono

Im no professional photographer, I use the camera for taking pictures on holiday/ out drinking/ arty MySpace poses etc, as I expect many others probably will do so I will give my views based on my experiences in these areas.

Design
----------

I have found the camera's design to be most excellent. The camera itself is constructed wholly out of a lightweight metal, meaning that it is very robust if you were to throw it in your bag (not sure about dropping it, I have dropped it once onto carpet and it survived undamaged with no scratches but repeated dropping is probably not to be advised), and it feels very solid to hold.

On the front of the camera there is a sliding metal cover, which slides over the flash, flash indicator light and the lens. If you slide the cover down to reveal the lens, the camera turns on. Slide it back up and, yup you guessed it, the camera turns off. This is good for quick picture capturing (although there is a slight delay of about 1second) and the sliding action feels very smooth and comfortable to use. On the back of the camera there is an excellent 2.5" LCD screen, and buttons to scan through pics, select modes, and delete the crap pics of you holding it at arms length towards your face. The buttons are okay to use and feel as solid as the rest of the camera, but they may be a little small and fiddly for some. On the camera top there is the shutter release button (or the 'take-the-picture' button for those who are not sure what that means), which is easy to press; you slightly depress it to auto-focus and full press it to take. This system takes a little getting used to, but a similar system is used on most digital cameras so get used it you will have to I'm afraid.

One major downside i have found with the design is that there is absolutely no viewfinder, you have to rely totally on the LCD screen to see the image you are capturing. In most situations this is okay, but say you are in a dark bar or club for example and you want to take a picture, the LCD screen show a black scene until the flash goes off and you have to do a bit of guess work to predict what your camera is capturing. Also if you are trying to take a picture of a fast moving object, you have to track it using the screen, which is far more difficult than keeping the object within a viewfinder.

In all though, a very sleek, sexy and modern design, and it feels very solid to use (it is also 'weatherproof' whatever that means, tornado's and flash-floods are 'weather' but I doubt it would stand them).

Features
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The camera has many features, although some of them may be of more novelty value than actual usefulness. Firstly the camera has a built in flash, which is very powerful and effective and, well flashy. One ridiculous function however is the 'red-eye reduction' mode on the flash. Set the camera to this mode and you are in for a real treat. Basically the flash strobes for a few seconds before finally flashing and taking the picture, supposedly to contract the irises of the eye or some rubbish, but it is so startling and blinding that all your red-eye reduced pictures simply contain people in various stages of covering their eyes, wincing at the strobing or just looking away in pain. I have just tried out this function about 2 minutes ago to see if it is really as bad as I remeber it was, and I am still semi-blinded as I try to type this. It is just not practical in my opinion, and it takes too long to take a picture.

A cool feature, or should I say features, however are the various pre-programmed, built in 'scenes'. Basically you press a button to set the camera to 'scene' mode and you get about 15 different 'scenes' to choose from. These range from 'portrait' (which sets the camera to optimal settings to take a portrait photo) to 'sunset' (brings out the reds and sets camera to optimal settings in low light) to 'fireworks' (slower shutter speed to capture fireworks) and even 'museum' (yeah I'm not sure about that one either). Even cooler, on some of the scenes, like portrait for instance, the camera superimposes on the LCD screen some guides (like the outline of a head or some lines dividing up the screen into thirds) so you can perfectly compose a shot. Some of you purists will however be saying "you shouldn't use guides, it's art man, don't let the machine tell you what to do", and to be honest after the initial "that's cool" factor I never really use them, I mean you don't really need a guide on the screen to take a picture of someones face, and I mostly can't be bothered to bring up the guides on the screen and want to take the picture quickly. It is a neat feature however and may be useful to some.

Aside from the many scenes, there is also a video capture mode. I have used this a few times, and if the lighting is poor then the video quality isn't top notch, but if you just want to use it to record your mate drunk or your kids playing in the garden then it does the job. The camera also has a built in micophone to record sound, and some (frankly rubbish) built in speakers for playback on the camera. If you get a memory card for the camera you can record lengthy videos, but if you use the internal memory to save the vids then you will only get a few minutes worth. There is also a time-lapse mode on the camera which I found very cool. Basically in time-lapse mode you set up the camera in a postition and once started it takes a picture every (x)minutes and makes them into an video. This is cool for setting up at your window for a few hours to watch the sky change and the cars come and go. It is a bit of a novelty however and you will eventually run out of ideas of stuff to 'time-lapse'.

As mentioned there is a built in microphone in the camera. Aside from being used to record sound in a video, you can also record sound clips directly, so in effect turning your camera into a dictaphone of sorts. In addition to this you can record and assign a sound-bite to your pictures easily, although quite the reason for needing to do this is a mystery to me, I mean you generally know who/what is in your pictures so no need for it (although handy for the day after a night of heavy drinking). The sound quality is not all that good however, and if you playback through the naff speakers in the camera it is near indeciperable, so unless you were to download them to your comp before listening, the feature is a bit pointless really, and probably wont be used all that much.

One final mode which is worth mentioning is the 'macro mode'. This is basically a close-up mode for taking pictures of stuff, well close-up really. The lens is set to focus on near objects, and small objects can be photographed in suprising detail. This is good for taking photos of flowers, insects etc, but I found it interesting to take close-up images of things like the piles of a carpet, and the nib of a pen, just to see them in all their magnified glory.

Aside from the aforementioned modes, you have your basic zoom and digital zoom, picture viewing mode, time-delay picture (so you can be on the photo as well as your friends/family) and other basic features.

Picture Quality
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As mentioned, this camera is 5.1 Megapixels, which is quite a lot for a non-professional camera. In fact to most people this may be perhaps a little to much. This is not really noticed until you transfer the picture onto the computer, and you notice two things:
1)The file sizes are big, we are talking close to 1Mb per pic and if you have reems of precious pictures on your computer that are all this file size then you are going to eat up your available hard-disk space.
2) If you view the photos actual size, your nostril is as big as your fist (ok slight exageration, but they are big)

Unless you are wanting to print the pics out A2 size, you will probably resort to resising each one so it is smaller and takes up less memory. So 5.1 Megapixels sound impressive but to the everyday user is just not needed.

The picture quality itself is good, but does vary depending on how you took the picture. If you take a picture with flash, the quality is brilliant due to the good lighting. But this gives an artificial looking brightness to the picture, especially in a dark setting. Without flash however, unless you are outside in broad daylight, it is so easy to get a blurred or less than sharp picture as the camera shutter stays open longer and is more susceptable to shaking and movement. You can counter this with some of the camera settings, or by resting the camera on something to keep it still, but if you don't have the time to mess with the settings etc you just have to keep it still and hope for the best. Some cameras are better at coping with low level light conditions than others, this one isn't so good, but it is not terrible and you do learn how to hold the camera to get better and clearer shots.

Conclusion
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In conclusion I would say that this camera is definately worth the relatively low price. I managed to pick mine up for £150 with memory card and a case which is an absolute bargain. I would recommend getting a memory card for it as the internal memory is only 12Mb, which is fine if you can keep transfering pics to a computer, but if you take it on holiday you will use up the memory pretty quickly and have to start deleting some. It is very easy to use, for the price you get a lot of good features such as the sometimes useful 'scenes' mode and video capture, aswel as your own mini-disco lights in the form of the red-eye reduction mode, and to top it off it looks swish.

For a non-professional the camera is great as it is solid enough to carry round with you without fear of damage and easy to take good quality point and click photos quickly. For the budding photographer I would also recomend this as it has enough adjustable features such as exposure and ISO settings to allow you to take high-quality photos also, aswel as the macro mode for close-up photography.

It's just a shame about the lack of a viewfinder really, that would have been really useful. Which reminds me of when my dad first tried using it, he couldn't grasp that there was no viewfinder and as I watched he flipped the camera over and over trying to find it, eventually giving up and pressing the LCD screen to his eye. 

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