Introduction

The Nikon Coolpix S600 packs a 10 megapixels sensor with a 4X stabilized wide-angle lens and a 2.7" LCD in a body which is 0.9" thick. The Nikon S600 is definitely one of the smallest ultra-compacts with a stabilized wide-angle lens.

Exposure on the S600 is entirely automatic. Aside from +/- 2 stops of exposure-compensation, exposure is always controlled by the camera alone. With a choice of center-weighed or evaluative metering, this camera shows little flexibility. One headline feature of the S600 is its high-sensitivity range which goes to ISO 3200. It uses SD or SD-HC cards for memory and a lithium-ion battery for power. This is pretty much standard among recent ultra-compacts.

Suitability

This small ultra-compact distinguish itself by its wide-angle lens which makes it more suitable for landscape, architecture and close-quarter indoor shots than most digital cameras. With an equivalent to 28-112mm in 35mm terms, the S600 can render flattering portraits and a variety of close-by subject.

While the Nikon Coolpix S600 is a general purpose point-and-shoot camera, its feature set is rather limited. Aside from custom white-balance and 4 focus-point selection modes, its features appear on nearly all ultra-compacts. Notice the shutter-speed range of 1/1500 to 4s which is neither fast enough for high-speed action, nor long enough for night photography.

The 2.7" LCD makes it easy to frame images, although visibility can be an issue under bright light and there is no optical viewfinder to fallback on. Note that we only complain about the lack of an optical viewfinder when the LCD is inadequate under expected conditions. This is one of those cases.

The Coolpix also records VGA quality movies and audio only clips. Movies can be recorded in single-shot or continuous focus modes.

Usability

As the S600 is one of the smallest cameras, its size is not without compromise. The build quality is excellent everywhere except for the flimsy but flexible battery-door compartment cover. Its nice but slippery surface lacks any type of grip and, on the rear, there is barely space for the tip of your thumb to rest. The provided wrist-strap provides security from accidental falls. One construction issue is that the plastic lens cover lets in quite a bit of dust. The tripod socket is poorly placed at one end of the camera casing.

The camera is powered by a recessed but easy to use button on the top-panel. Next to it is the shutter-button which has short travel but is responsive enough. Most other controls are easily accessible, almost all of them located around the combined control-dial and 4-way controller. Speaking of which, the control-dial is overly sensitive and prone to accidental changes.

The Mode button activates a virtual on-screen mode dial. Actually, it activates two: one for in Shooting mode and one in Playback mode. In shooting mode, the modes are: Shooting, Hi ISO, Scene, Voice-Recording, Movie and Setup menu. In play mode, the modes are: Play, Date List, Sound Playback, Setup. The Play button enters and exits playback mode. This is the one which triggers the virtual mode-dial to change. It is almost usable at all times. Note that the camera is not shooting priority, the Play button must used to enter and exit playback mode.

The Menu button obviously activates the current mode's menu. While this is typical for most cameras, there is normally a path from such menu to the setup menu. This is not the case with the S600. Instead, one must use the virtual mode-dial to enter Setup mode. Setup mode solely consists of a two-page menu system. The Delete button works both in Shooting and Playback mode. In Shooting mode it affects the last picture taken. In Playback mode it affects the currently displayed image. In both cases, it asks confirmation before deleting the target image.

The central control is the rotating 4-way controller. Each direction is assigned a function in Shooting mode. Up selects the flash-mode, Right activates exposure-compensation, Down toggles macro-mode and Left selects a self-timer. The dial rotation is used to change exposure compensation, camera modes and navigate between images.

The large 2.7" LCD is mostly exposure-priority. In low-light, it shows an excessively bright preview which can cause you to apply too much exposure-compensation. This is unfortunate as the preview in good light is quite accurate. In some rare cases, also in low-light, the white-balance is not previewed correctly. Visibility is good in low-light but the display is too reflective, thus causing difficulty in bright light.

The S600 uses SD or SD-HC memory cards, which are presently the cheapest and most common form of flash memory. Images are numbered in a standard form but the number keeps increasing even after changing the memory card. Not only is this rather annoying, there is also no menu option to reset the counter to zero. Then again, maybe only camera reviewers care about this.

Performance

Results from the Nikon Coolpix S600 are on the good side of average overall but not without issues. The wide angle 4X optical zoom lens shows very low optical distortion and consistent image sharpness across the frame. It is, however, prone to chromatic aberrations which often appear as blue fringing in areas of strong contrast. At least, the aberrations themselves are small, it is just there there are much more of them than usual. The lens' Vibration Reduction mechanism provides effective image stabilization as well.

Image noise is always present with the Coolpix S600. Even at ISO 100, a fine noise pattern is apparent. The good news is that, while noise increases at each ISO, it remains a fine pattern and retains more sharpness than most non-Fuji ultra-compacts. The effect of such a fine noise pattern is that fine-details get very muddy. This camera also applies much stronger noise-reduction to dark areas of images which results in an apparent shift in softness between light and shadow areas. A critical eye can see that the S600's noise is strongly chromatic at high ISO settings which causes images to lose color saturation and contrast.

Colors produced by the Nikon Coolpix S600 are highly consumer targeted and noticeably over-saturated. The greens particularly suffer from kryptonitis causing very unnatural looking grass and foliage. Reds are also over-saturated but not too much. White-balance is generally good outdoors but suffers indoors.

Both automatic and preset white-balance often leave strong color casts under artificial lighting. Luckily, the Nikon S600 has a custom white-balance feature which proves to be quite accurate. The samples to the right show how wrong automatic white-balance can be. We could have shown preset white-balance too but there was no difference. Custom white-balance solved the problem though.

The S600 shows generally good exposure accuracy with a strong center-weight, even in the default metering mode. This emphasizes to the center of the frame which is useful for most subject-centric snapshots. The downside is that skies are frequently over-exposed when contrast is high.

In terms of speed, the S600 produces mixed results. On the fast side, there is startup, showdown and zoom. All of those are quite fast for an ultra-compact. Focusing speeds are slightly below average, going from decent in good light to very slow in low light.

Shot-to-shot speed is between 3 and 4 seconds. This is inadequate when dealing with moving subject where shots have to be taken multiple times to get the desired pose. There is also a slightly noticeable shutter-lag with a temporary LCD blackout in single-frame mode. As for continuous shooting, the S600 gets 1.1 FPS and keeps it up for 10 frames. During continuous shooting there is a severe preview lag, making it impossible to track a moving subject.

Conclusion

The Nikon Coolpix S600 represent the typical modern ultra-compact with a wide-angle lens. A quick search revealed the existence of at least 10 such models with 10 or more megapixels sensors, with half of these also equipped with image stabilization. The point is that this little digital camera has a lot to compete against.

Overall, this ultra-compact delivers a performance which is good on image quality but behind in terms of speed. Good sharpness and a fine noise pattern deliver quite usable images up to ISO 800. Beyond that, noise and noise-reduction destroys colors and details. Speed is on the slow side when we look at the most important aspects: shutter-lag, focusing and shot-to-shot speeds.

While build quality and battery-life are good, other areas including white-balance in artificial light, handling, user interface and color over-saturation proved problematic, at least compared to its best competitors.

Based on this mix of above and below average show of performance, the S600 is awarded an Average rating. Its main competitors being the Fuji Finepix F100fd, the Sony Cybershot DSC-W170, the Panasonic Lumix DMC-FX35 and the Casio Exilim EX-Z200. Having seen how good the F100fd is, it is hard not to recommend it over the S600.

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