Nikon Coolpix S6200

The Nikon Coolpix S6200 is an entry-level superzoom compact. With a budget price tag naturally comes a limited set of tech specs, and so the S6200 has a 10x zoom lens (25-250mm) but a 16-Megapixel CCD sensor. Plus, you can forget Full HD video, as the S6200 sticks with good old 720p.

Handling

The Nikon S6200 is a reasonably good-looking compact. Then again, it may look nice, but build quality leaves a lot to be desired, as this camera feels more like a plastic cigarette lighter than a stylish superzoom compact. From the front, the single-coloured, bright, almost shimmering casing is certainly eye-catching, making this compact look particularly attractive ... it's just a shame that the back of the camera is quite so ugly and that it's not a bit slimmer.

This smooth, shiny finish does nothing to help you grip onto the camera. The front face is particularly slippery and the textured thumb-rest doesn't help much.


The screen is pretty standard stuff for an entry-level compact with a definition of just 230,000 dots and a TN screen panel that looks black when viewed from below (you can forget lining up shots above your head, then). Screen colour fidelity is within average for a compact, with good blacks, decent enough mid-greys, but light grey shades that are soon washed out to white.

All in all, the S6200 has a pretty standard interface that's easy to get the hang of using—especially since there aren't many settings on offer, even in P mode.

Responsiveness

The autofocus is within average both at telephoto and wide-angle settings, as are the 1.4 fps burst mode and the photo-to-photo turnaround time. However, it takes no less than 3.4 seconds for the S6200 to start up, making this one of the slowest cameras we've seen for a while. The fact you have to press the on/off button for over a second before it responds is no doubt partly responsible.

Picture Quality

The Coolpix S6200 has a new 25-250 mm lens but uses a bog-standard 16-Megapixel CCD sensor. Given the sensor's previous track record, sensitivity should be just about acceptable, but it'll be interesting to see what the new lens brings to the equation.


First of all, it's no surprise to see noise handled by strong smoothing. This is visible from 200 ISO in large-sized pictures and from 400 ISO in 8" x 10" (20 x 27 cm) photos. At 400 ISO, granular noise can also be seen in large areas of dark colour. At 800 ISO, smoothing gets even stronger until things really go to pot at 1600 ISO—noise and blurring are so strong that even a 4" x 6" print (10 x 15 cm) is inadvisable. On top of that, we found that the white balance changed dramatically at 800 ISO in our test shots. Plus, a slight drop in saturation was noticeable at 400 ISO, becoming even more marked at 3200 ISO.

The mechanical stabilisation system works OK. We managed a clear, sharp Barbie shot at 200 ISO and at 1/5 ths of a second.


The new lens in the Coolpix S6200 doesn't deliver consistent results. While sharpness is acceptable in the middle of the image (although it still isn't anything special), the edges of the frame look more hazy.

At telephoto settings, the image is a little less sharp in the middle but quality over the frame is much more consistent than at wide-angle settings. It therefore looks better, on the whole.

Note that the automatic white balance can be a bit inconsistent. Under incandescent light, the picture sometimes has a blue tinge and sometimes has a yellow tinge.

Video

The S6200 films 720p HD video. The optical zoom can be used in video mode, but refocusing after a change in focal length makes for a rather unpleasant zooming effect. Worse still, you can hear the noise of the zoom motor when filming very quiet scenes.

The image isn't particularly well defined and is excessively contrasted—light zones are overexposed and darker areas flood together.

In other words, we wouldn't recommend filming with the S6200 unless you really have to.