Nikon Coolpix S510

Opinion: As a Nikon pro user I bought this for my shirt pocket. I rarely criticise cameras but this is a real piece of junk that cannot pass without comment. Nice design, not very well assembled, good menus but Image Quality is just worse than awful... full of artifacts, fuzzy images with fuzzy edges and just so way below par compared with an Ixus you wonder which OEM manufacturer Nikon bought this device from and why they even bothered. Yes, small in size and correspondingly small on quality. Why Nikon would want to reduce their brand equity by putting their name on such a dismally inferior IQ device is anybody's guess.

Opinion: I bought this as a pocket camera to compliment my DSLR. This one I can have on me all the time for those times when you wish you had a camera handy.
This is a nice little camera. It fits easily into a pants pocket. I hardly notice it's there. In good conditions the image quality is superb. Pictures are very very sharp. Nikon uses a soft hand with noise reduction and seems to favor detail over noise reduction with this camera. I like that. If you hate digital noise this camera may not be for you. If you are handy with noise reduction software you can get some super good results with this one.

It starts up faster than I can lift it to take a picture. I swear I push the on button and lift the camera and it's ready to go that fast. The menu system seems easy enough. I never read the manual and didn't need to.

Oh, the image stabilization is cool. It's not magic, but I definitely see a difference in low light photos with regard to camera shake.

Opinion: Overview
This is a solid little camera that's good for the casual picture taker.

Optical image stabilization offers extra hand held capability, though its not the miraculous anti shaky-hands-blur most people expect it to be.

Contruction
Solidly built, although the rotating navigation wheel feels slightly flimsy and fiddly (but this might be down to personal preference).

Features
A wider lens would've been nice.

Limited number of scene modes, and limited creative exposure modes (if you care about this - you could always apply post-processing after downloading the pictures to your computer to get the same effects).

Ability to manual focus and set custom white balance a plus, though.

Image Quality
Pictures taken in bright lighting are good, pictures taken in low-light range in quality from average to bad.

Ease of use
Easy to use, although I did take a short while to get used to button placements and functions.