Nikon Coolpix S9100

With an 18x wide-angle lens, a sleek 3-inch LCD and a 12-Megapixel sensor that holds its own at high ISO settings, the Nikon S9100 is an attractive compact camera. However, it's not the only seductive snapper in the highly competitive superzoom compact market. So does the Nikon S9100 have what it takes to stand out from the crowd?

Handling

Considering that this camera has an 18x zoom lens, the S9100 is actually quite compact and would easily fit into a large jacket pocket or a small bag. The S9100 is a well-made and well-finished camera that feels sturdy to handle ... apart from the slightly fragile looking connection port covers. The controls are responsive, nicely sized and pleasant to use. The 3-inch LCD is also a nice touch. The on-screen image flows smoothly in good light, but does suffer from glitches and lag when the light starts to fade. Colour accuracy isn't too bad (DeltaE = 4.8), but the colours are a little on the cold side (colour temperature approximately 7000 K). It's just a shame that colour shading and nuances don't come through quite so well in bright light.


On the whole, the Nikon S9100 is a nice camera to handle and the controls fall nicely under your fingers. The click-round wheel on the back also means you can scroll through options and menus quickly and easily. 

Responsiveness

The S9100 is quick to start up, taking just over a second to get ready for use, and the autofocus is fast in wide-angle mode. All in all then, this camera won't hold you back. In telephoto, the autofocus does slow down a little, but that also depends on the kind of subject you're shooting. In low light, the camera's performances are in line with current market standards, with the autofocus taking just under two seconds.

In burst mode, the S9100 can take five shots at 9.5 fps. That's not bad, but it's still not as good at the ten-shot bursts seen in come rival models. 

Picture Quality

The first thing we were keen to check out on the Nikon S9100 was its monster 18x (25-450 mm) optical zoom. Even if they're starting to crop up all over the place these days (Sony HX9V, Samsung WB700, Olympus SZ-10 etc.), superzoom lenses are still impressive, especially when packed into compact cameras. In wide angle, the S9100 does a decent enough job. The picture could be sharper, but the lens ensures consistent quality so there's no loss in quality towards the edges of the shots. In telephoto, pictures lose a little contrast, dynamic range and consistency, as the edges of the frames look a little more hazy. In this respect, the Sony HX9V has a better quality lens and clearly offers better performances. Chromatic aberration is kept well in check (probably thanks to the internal image processing system) and won't cause too much trouble in your pictures. Distortion is also well controlled and is practically invisible at 25 mm. The S9100 even has a macro mode that focuses on subjects just a few centimetres away.

At the lowest ISO setting, the pictures are OK but lack contrast. They could probably do with touching up in photo editing software to bring out the contrast and make your shots look more striking, especially if you plan on printing them. It's surprising to see that speckles of noise are already visible at 160 ISO (in solid grey and blue areas, for example). As the ISO setting increases, smoothing starts to become apparent at 400 ISO, and at 800 ISO the finest details are lost. Plus, on areas of block colour, grainy noise becomes very noticeable. In most situations, we wouldn't recommend going any higher than 1600 ISO.


The S9100 has a decent Auto mode that handles exposure well. It has a stabilisation system that works by moving the sensor and which allows you to gain about two speed settings (1/13 sec. for a focal length of around 60 mm in 24 x 36 equivalent), which is good although not amazingly impressive.

The camera captures colours that are easy on the eye and actually fairly accurate. The automatic white balance gives good results even under tungsten light.

Video

With the Nikon S9100, you can start recording video at the simple touch of a button. The S9100 records 1080 HD video in the AVCHD format in an .MOV container. On fairly static subjects, videos come out OK and the stereo effect is well recreated in the sound. For fast-moving subjects, the bitrate of 14 Mbps isn't really sufficient and compression artefacts and ghosting are a problem. Switching to 720p at 60 fps gives smoother results. Plus, barrel distortion is particularly visible when filming in wide angle. The optical zoom can be used while filming (and can be slowed down) as can the continuous autofocus.