The Nikon Coolpix S600 boots up in a flash, but were its photos as quick to impress us?
Review summary of the Nikon Coolpix S600:
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 The Nikon Coolpix S600 packs 10-megapixels, but compared to cheaper 8-megapixel compacts from Nikon, it lacks zoom, manual controls, and dynamic range. The interface is clean, the camera itself looks nice, and the inclusion of optical image-stabilization is always a plus, but it seems that the main selling point of the S600 is its aggrandized megapixel-count, and that simply isn't justification enough for its high price. If image quality and size are tantamount, then we recommend saving up a bit for a prosumer with a larger sensor; if point-and-shoot functionality are most important, then other cameras may better fit the bill. Release: April 2008. Price: $250.
Pros: Good image quality. Good macro. VR lens provides excellent stabilization. Fastest boot-up speed in class.
Cons: Very high price. Thick body.
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Full Nikon Coolpix S600 Review:
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Design - Good
The Nikon Coolpix S600 is a well reasoned collection of finished metal, rounded edges, and logical design-accents. Certainly a sleek camera, its pocket-sized exterior feels streamlined to be as small as possible. The body is a smidge thicker than we'd like, but nevertheless the S600 is a slick point-and-shoot.
The power and shutter buttons are on top, and on the back are the two-way zoom control, four shortcuts, and a four-way interface that, in a nice touch, doubles as a wheel-controller. Overall the Nikon S600 is an unobtrusive, usable camera with a nice, if unremarkable, design.
Features - Very good
The S600's most immediate strength is the inclusion of a VR Nikkor lens, ‘Vibration Reduction' being Nikon's variation of optical image-stabilization. In terms of stabilization, VR lenses are in the top echelon of lenses we've tested, and true to expectations the S600 provided excellent shake-reduction all the way down to single-digit shutter speeds.
Its best feature, however, may be its speedy operation. The S600 powers-on in mere milliseconds: in our tests, the time span between depressing the power button and being able to take a photo was functionally nil. In other words, the camera was ready for operation before we could comfortably get our finger to the shutter. For many point-and-shooters, this probably isn't a big deal; for lovers of sports photography, fauna photography, and action shots in general, such a delay can be anathema, and having instant-on could alone be reason enough to pick up an S600.
The Nikon S600 also features most standard P&S aids, including in-camera red-eye reduction, face detection, continuous shooting, and Nikon's ‘BSS' feature, which takes a series of photos and intelligently selects the sharpest one. Fringe features like smile-shutter and in-camera panorama-assist are missing, but this is counterbalanced by the inclusion of ‘D-Lighting,' Nikon's dynamic-range booster.
Interface / Bundle - Good
For the most part, the Nikon S600 handles like a typical point-and-shoot. Zoom is controlled piecemeal by a two-way controller, and playback, menu, macro, timing, flash and exposure correction are controlled via shortcut buttons. The menu system is clean and intuitive, and most settings are quickly accessible. Strangely, while color-modes such as black & white, sepia and ‘vivid' are available, the S600 does not allow adjustments to in-camera contrast and saturation, which is a disappointing exclusion. On the other hand, the camera does feature a wheel-interface on the four-way controller, which functions almost like a hidden mode-wheel. This greatly boosts the S600's usability and makes switching between, say, the picture and video modes quick and painless.
The bundle includes a dispensable software-suite that contains drivers, a panorama maker and a transfer utility, but not even basic storage or editing utilities, though the install program did deign to infest our computer with an entire folder of HTML links to order pages for other software. At its steep price point, the P60 should come with this software, and leave the folder of bloat behind. Otherwise the camera comes with a wrist-strap, an external charger, a USB cable, and an A/V cable.
Image quality - Very good
For a 10-megapixel, 1/2.3" CCD powered point-and-shoot, the S600 manages noise quite well. On one hand, noise is already visible even as of ISO-200, but on the other hand, noise is never unusably dense, even when the camera is maxed-out at ISO-3200. Still, its performance overall is worse than most compacts with fewer megapixels.
The same caveat is applicable nearly to all cameras that pack 10-megapixles onto tiny imaging sensors: the raw size of the images may be increased, but dynamic range and noise diffusion are invariably worsened. Also, contrary to what most marketing teams would lead us to believe, megapixel count hardly affects perceptional sharpness at all. Thus, we have to maintain that the inclusion of a 10-megapixel sensor is not reason alone to buy a camera. The megapixel count is an important parameter only in relation to the size of the sensor, and squeezing more and more pixels onto the same-sized sensor potentially could harm image-quality far more than it could meliorate it. To date some of the best P&S image quality we've seen was from a 7-megapixel Canon with a sticker-price barely over $100.
Scene test
That said, the Nikon S600 did perform impressively in this scene test: the image is bright with good contrast, colors are ‘popping' but accurate, and edges are distinct. Despite having been taken at ISO-100, there is some noise visible in the street signs and under the store awnings, and the camera's processor appears to be over-sharpening, yielding ghosted edges. Still, at sub-100% zooms, this is exemplary performance from a point-and-shoot.
Edge test
Edge test from the Nikon Coolpix P60
The S600 also does well enough in this edge test, though there is fringing along the edges of the branches. Compared with the exact same shot taken with the Nikon Coolpix P60 (a cheaper 8-megapixel compact from the same manufacturer), there's also slightly less dynamic-range and, ironically, an overall hazier appearance. Again, megapixels do not a camera make.
Macro test
Macro performance is excellent on the Nikon S600, from its tight focusing-range to a surprisingly good depth-of-field. Colors are appreciably well-rendered, and the D-Lighting feature does an admirably job of preserving highlights in this overlit situation.
Price and availability
The Nikon Coolpix S600 will start selling for $250 () in April 2008.
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