Nikon Coolpix S80

In spite of its wide-angle lens and multitouch screen, the Nikon S70 couldn't be considered anything more than an acceptable camera. Although the Coolpix S80 has lost the wide-angle lens, maybe its new high-definition screen, 14-Megapixel sensor and revamped design will help it succeed where the S70 faltered.

Handling

At first glance, the S80 looks promising. The camera is incredibly thin, well-made and has a classy look and feel to it. Straight away, we noticed some very good design features, such as the well-built battery and memory card compartment, now located on the side of the camera and with a metal lid that glides opens smoothly. However, on closer inspection we noticed some less-than-impressive details. For example, there's no physical control for the zoom and the HDMI and USB ports have soft-rubber covers that are tricky to open with short nails (the previous model's compartment on the underside of the camera was more practical).


The S80 may look great, but as soon as you switch the camera on it's a different story entirely. The colours on the screen are insanely saturated (see sidebar) and the user interface is looking old and tired. For example, there are two virtual zoom buttons in the bottom-right corner of the screen instead of a more user-friendly slide-along bar. Plus, you can't scroll through menus with the flick of the finger as you might with a touchscreen mobile or a Sony T-series camera; here, you have to move a vertical scroll bar up and down. Above all, the internal interface is very slow, sometimes taking almost a second to respond to a command. It's the same story in playback mode too. Although multitouch screen technology means you can zoom in on a shot by 'pinching' it with your fingers, it takes a good second or so to respond, and even then it's not always that accurate.

The S80 is set by default to take pictures in the 16:9 format, and therefore in 9 Megapixels. The 14 Megapixels advertised are only available when taking 4:3 pictures—an option you have to select in the camera's internal menu. The S80 has abandoned the 28 mm wide-angle lens used in the S70 for a 35 mm lens with no real wide angle. Plus, cutting down the default image reduces the field of view even further, so that the S80 effectively only uses 3.2 x 5.7 mm of its sensor. This means that the resulting image has a focal length of 41 mm! Also note that unlike Panasonic, Nikon doesn't correct the EXIF data to take this into account, and the image file data still shows a field of view of 35 mm.

One last, slightly disturbing detail is that the S80 screen doesn't display the whole field captured in the photos it takes. In other words, you could end up seeing some extra details on a photo print that weren't on the screen when you lined up the shot.

Responsiveness

We had to do this test twice to make sure we hadn't got it wrong! However, the unfortunate truth is that where the S70 started up in less than 2 seconds, we had to wait 3.4 seconds after sliding back the lens cover before we could take a photo with the new S80. The photo-to-photo turnaround time has been slightly improved, even though it still takes over 2 seconds. The autofocus is actually quite responsive, particularly in wide-angle mode and in good light conditions where it's up there with the market leaders.

The burst mode is just ridiculous, however, taking two images 1.25 seconds apart—and that's your lot!

Picture Quality

Don't expect miracles in the S80's handling of ISO settings. The 14-Megapixel CCD used here is known for its relative quality, and Nikon S80 gives typically bog-standard results with granularity visible at 400 ISO and heavy smoothing at 800 ISO—a setting you'll want to avoid unless making very small prints. Above that you'll just get fuzz.



The lens is really quite surprising. Periscopic lenses generally give fairly average image quality that lacks consistency across the frame, particularly in wide-angle mode. Here, given that the focal length goes no lower than 35 mm, we could have logically hoped for a level of quality at least the same as with the 28 mm lens used in the S70.

However, there's no getting round the fact that the new lens is just no good. There's a blatant lack of consistency across the frame, with sharp lines already starting to blur at the minimum focal length. This is clearly visible in a 4" x 6" print or when viewing shots back on a Full HD monitor. Don't even think about cropping or resizing the photo or printing out a large-format print, otherwise the blurring around the edges of the picture will be very noticeable. In an 8" x 10" print, only about a quarter of the frame in the middle of the picture is clear and sharp.


These test shots show what an 8" x 10" print would look like. In spite of its 25 mm wide angle, the Sony TX9 shows up much more texture in the fabric at the top of the shot and more fine detail in the map.

In telephoto, the quality is noticeably better and could realistically be used for an 8" x 10" print. However, coloured fringes will be visible if you look at the print very closely or if you crop the image to focus on a detail that's not in the centre of the frame.

Video

The S80 films in 720p HD resolution compressed to H.264. You can use the optical zoom while filming and stereo sound is recorded, although, to be honest, it's not great (lots of breathing/wind noise and echoes). The video image is plagued with noise in low light too. In other words, the video mode nothing to get excited about—even if it is perhaps the most convincing feature of the S80.