This S610c from Nikon is nothing more than than the Coolpix S610 with WiFi included.  Naturally enough, the rest of its technical specification is identical: a 10 Megapixel sensor, 4x zoom, wide angle and optical stabilization.  But does the image quality remain the same?

Handling

Nikon hasn't updated the design of its 'S' series.  The S610c is still a very compact little camera, both sleek and refined and finished to a very high standard. 

It has a large, 2.7'' LCD screen with a 230 000 pixel resolution providing a very fluid preview of your shots.  Unfortunately, it's all too easy to get such a large screen covered in greasy fingerprints--it also means that the small controls are squeezed off to one side and difficult to use.


The scroll wheel is a quick and accurate way to choose the options you want, but the rest of the menus are navigated using the traditional Menu and Mode keys.  One disappointment is that you can't jump out of the menus by releasing the shutter, which quickly gets annoying if you want to take a photo quickly.

Image Quality

All in all, the the S610c takes photos that are sharp and neat at the center of the frame, but which are less accurate around the edges.  Things get more complicated when it comes to white balancing, which is far too yellow inside but performs better outside.  Some photos suffered from purple fringing in high contrast zones.

The video is perfectly acceptable (640 x 480 pixels) and films clips that are just about usable.  Still, it's nice to be able to use the zoom and autofocus while shooting video. 

The optical stabilization is also pretty powerful, and we managed to take this sharp snap of Barbie in just 1/3 second.  Such good results mean you can avoid cranking up the ISO settings too quickly.



Finally, there's one fatal flaw on the S610c.  The S600 disappointed us when it came to looking at ISO test cards, and was a long way behind thecompetition.  Fortunately, the electronic noise handling is a little better here, but graininess is visible even at 400 ISO.  It becomes problematic from 800 ISO, and which point images are too blurry to make decent prints form.