Nikon Coolpix S3000

The Nikon Coolpix S3000 is designed to replace the S220 and is available in seven even more impressive colours than its predecessor. It has a 12-Megapixel sensor and a 27-108 mm zoom lens, but there's no mechanical stabilisation system. It looks like its great design and budget price tag could well be this camera's main selling points.


Handling

The S3000 is an ultra-compact camera with a smooth, sleek and seductive plastic casing. The buttons lay flat against the camera body, with only the shutter release and zoom controls protruding in any real way. Unfortunately, the smooth finish can make the camera a little tricky to handle at times. Plus, the chrome-effect thumb rest doesn't inspire a great deal of confidence, and we're not sure how many drops or scrapes it could withstand.


This camera may have seduced us with its eye-catching curves, but as soon as we switched it on we were disappointed. The 230,000 dots make the on-screen definition only just acceptable, and don't expect smooth, seamless images when lining up a shot, as that's really not a strong point for this camera. The S3000 notably has trouble keeping up with moving subjects. In low light, dark zones get clogged into one big dark block and speckles of noise soon start to appear. Plus, as the screen uses a TN panel, vertical viewing angles are incredibly tight (see photo below).

The screen viewed straight on	... and tilted to around 15°.

The S3000 controls and interface are simple and easy to get the hang of. A basic 'Camera' button is on hand for switching from auto photo mode to video mode or to any of the other modes available (see insert).

Responsiveness

Although the responsiveness is still not exceptional, it's surprising to see that the S3000 does considerably better than the S4000 in this field. Photo-to-photo turnaround is fast, and the start-up time is perfectly respectable. However, focusing is still slower than in the current market leaders, even though it stays relatively stable in low light.



Picture Quality

The S3000 has problems keeping quality consistent across the frame, something we already noticed in the S4000, which uses the same lens. Sharpness is fine in the centre of the picture (although certainly not exceptional), but gets worse towards the edges of the shot. It's a bit better in telephoto mode, but we noticed slight purple fringes at all focal lengths.

Digital noise management isn't this camera's speciality, as smoothing is visible on large-sized photo prints from 200 ISO. Granularity kicks in at 400 ISO on flat, block colours and at 800 ISO there's a dramatic change in quality, with speckling noise and fuzziness visible even on a 4" x 6" print. What's more, the sensor's limited dynamic range can cause shots taken in bright conditions to be overexposed.

The camera's electronic stabilisation system doesn't really work; just take a look at how the hair has been smoothed in the picture above.

 

Video

The S3000 doesn't have an HD video mode, filming in VGA resolution instead. A digital zoom is available, but it has a very short range and doesn't do picture quality any favours either. The optical zoom can't be used while filming. Noise is a major problem when filming indoors or in darker conditions, and sharp changes in brightness can be harsh. Sound is recorded in mono and overall video quality lacks sharpness and quality.