Nikon Coolpix S100

After the rather disappointing Coolpix S80, Nikon is back with the totally reworked Coolpix S100. Like its predecessor, this new snapper has a slim and stylish design, not to mention a multipoint touchscreen, but the updated model comes with a 28 mm wide-angle lens (finally!) and a 16-Megapixel BSI CMOS sensor that could bring big improvements to photo and video image quality.

Handling

We've got pretty much the same complaints about the S100 as we had about the S80. The camera has a nice overall look and is well-made. However, the battery and memory card compartment door has been downgraded in quality, and is now made from rather flimsy feeling black plastic that doesn't seem to be all that firmly fixed to its hinge. Plus, the S100 has the same rubber connection port covers as the S80, which are just as fiddly to open with short nails. On the whole though, the S100 is a decent-quality camera that's pleasant to hold.


The LCD has some good features. For starters, it has a pretty incredible contrast ratio and its viewing angles are almost perfect, as is usually the way with OLED screens. Plus, screen resolution is sharp and detailed. The display isn't without fault, however, as the gamma is too low (light greys are soon washed out to white) and, above all, colour reproduction is way off the mark. In fact, this screen goes way beyond the sRGB colour space and effectively has no colour profile—a reasonably saturated red or green shade will therefore look practically fluorescent onscreen. Although that can look flattering in a landscape, it'll make portraits look awful (note that colours recorded in the image file will be perfectly normal, it's just the LCD that makes them look crazy).

The worse news is that the S100 has the same interface as the S80 ... all we can say is that comparison with a Sony TX-series camera would put it to shame. For starters there are the fiddly touch-sensitive zoom buttons, then there's the fact you have to use the vertical scroll bar on the right to browse through options (you can't scroll through the list itself with a finger), but the half-second delay between two pages in the menu really takes the biscuit. All of that makes this interface feel a good few years out of date. Worse still—multitouch technology, one of this model's most original features, really leaves a lot to be desired. It doesn't track your finger particularly accurately and, in the end, it's more practical to zoom in on an image in playback mode using the buttons on the left rather than pinching the image with your fingers.

Finally, like the S80, out of the box, the S100 is set to take 12-Megapixel 16:9 shots, tailored to suit the screen format. That makes the wide angle approximately 31 mm. You have to go into the menus and switch to 4:3 mode manually if you want full resolution shots and a wider wide-angle.

Responsiveness

If we overlooked the rather sluggish 2.5-second start-up time, then we'd have to give the S100 an excellent score in this field, as it shoots 2/10 ths of a second after you press the shutter-release button. That's incredibly impressive, and this tiny lag is effectively un-noticeable in good light.

The problem is that the autofocus doesn't seem to be able to keep up, particularly when the focal distance changes—the worst case scenario, for example, would be taking a macro shot then a landscape shot straight after. In such cases, the camera clearly prioritises speed and tends to make do with rather approximative focusing to keep up the pace. It's therefore worth taking the time to let the autofocus find the right position by keeping the shutter-release button half pressed until the little focusing light goes green.

Picture Quality

The Nikon S100 has a 16-Megapixel BSI CMOS sensor, which is a first for Nikon since the P500 and P300 had 12-Megapixel BSI CMOS sensors. We've seen Sony deliver very good-quality pictures with this kind of sensor, but only by using rather heavy-handed image processing, which can make pictures look a little artificial. That said, we've also seen Olympus (with the SZ-30 MR, for example) have a bit more trouble using this sensor to its full potential.


Nikon does an OK job, with noise levels kept under control up to 400 ISO. At 800 ISO smoothing is visible on 100% size shots, and 8" x 10" pictures (20 x 27 cm) lose contrast. Noise then becomes visible in darker zones too. We wouldn't recommend using sensitivity settings higher than 800 ISO.


The new 28-140 mm periscopic zoom lens fails to convince. The middle of the frame is decent enough at all focal lengths but it's still far from excellent. The edges of the frame are much less sharp, however, particularly at wide-angle settings. This lack of precision in the corners of the frame is visible on a 4" x 6" (11 x 15 cm) photo when viewed at full size onscreen, as well as on 8" x 10" pictures.

Video

The Coolpix S100 films Full HD video at 30 frames per second. Picture quality is nice enough but the exposure is very dense and quite dark. While this does prevent bright, light shades from being overexposed, it soon makes dark areas block together in black masses.

Sound is recorded in stereo, but the low-fidelity little microphones do have problems with echoes. Plus, in very quiet scenes the lens motor can be heard when you zoom.

All in all, the S100 video mode isn't bad, but we've seen better.