Nikon Coolpix S70

Opinion: For a point and shoot, this camera produces good quality pictures and videos. Some purple fringing is noticeable when viewed close-up. Flash is week unless one uses a “higher” ISO, which then provides for a 15’ reach. I’ve owned Canon Elphs and while the picture quality is very similar, certain features on this camera interested me. Specifically, a very compact design with internal (instead of protruding) lens, a bright 3.5” display screen, “imode” type touch screen operation, and finally, a number of image-mode enhancements like Dlighting for example. I’m not fussy about the mega pixel race, since that alone does not lead to quality pictures. For a p&s, considering the tiny CCD size, 10 should be the limit – but I digress.

The camera is fun and easy to use out of the box if your familiar with touch screen (imode) operation. Otherwise read the manual and play with the camera.

My quality assessment is based on the following mode of operation. I always use the highest resolution, vibration reduction to lens-only, ISO to Auto-80-200, and zoom to optical-only. I’ve also disabled the screen “touch-shutter” option, using instead the only button on the camera, the shutter release.

My shooting style is to first determine the zoom while viewing the scene, then place (by tapping the screen) the AE/AF symbol over the object of interest, half depress the shutter to lock it, then do a final recompose if needed, followed finally by completely depressing the shutter. This takes only a couple of seconds and results in accurate focus and exposure with little if any shutter delay. If one selects all the bells and whistles like face-detect, smile-detect, hybrid vibration reduction, and redeye reduction, then naturally, expect shutter delays. On the other hand, in a “party setting”, shutter delay may not be a consideration.

It’s not easy one handed operation (although not impossible), and sometimes an on-screen option can be accidentally selected when a finger strays on the display screen during shooting.

Since I always use Photoshop to post-process all my pictures, I don’t have a need to use the in-camera adjustments provided. However, I can understand their usefulness and have in fact tried some. There are numerous shooting and display features that sound very interesting.

The distributed SW (for Windows at least) is good and the hardcopy User’s Manual is also easy to reference.

In the end, I would prefer a higher display screen resolution, a separate power switch rather then the lens cover slider alone, and the conventional zoom selection on the shutter release instead of solely the on-screen mode.

Otherwise no problems.

Opinion: Because the 1st review is so good, complete and accurate I'll agree with most of it :-) However here are a few additional points:

The ability to charge while connected to the computer (an option you have to turn on because it's off by default) is simply great. Many, times I've connected other cameras to the computer started the download and then forgot about it, when I get back the battery is dead! Now, with the S70 that can't happen :-)