March 4th, 2008Review Of Nikon S51 Digital Camera
Nikon has handle to pain in a lot more features in their cameras while keeping their shape and size pretty much the same, that is, compact — the S51 is a fitting example of the same. Let’s see what it has to tender.
The Camera
The S51 comes in a slim, curvy, and glossy body with grey or black exterior options. It essentially features an 8-megapixel CCD, a 3x optical zoom lens (38-114mm eff), Vibration Reduction, and a 3-inch LCD. The camera events 92.5 x 59 x 21mm and weighs around 125 grams, creation it light and compartment friendly too. The shutter release button is placed on top of the camera with the power button next to it. The microphone is placed in the center while the One-touch portrayal button is placed on the other side. The back of the camera has the humongous 3-inch LCD with a few buttons dotted beside it along with the roll wheel and the zoom rocker.
Features
The S51 sports a 1 /2.5-inch CCD that can record 8.1 million pixels. It uses a Nikkor branded 38-114mm eff 3x optical zoom lens with aperture of f3.3-4.2 as well as a 4x digital zoom. It uses Nikon’s proprietary Optical VR technology for vibration decrease while clicking pictures.
A huge 3-inch LCD screen dominates most of the space at the back of the S51. A scroll-wheel and few small and stiff buttons spot the remaining space. The button is clearly labeled making them simple to read. What really bogged me down was the miniscule size of these buttons; they’re absolutely not for the thick-fingered among us.
The handy One-touch Portrait button makes it easier to achieve more satisfying shots by providing direct access to three Nikon image enhancement features. Face-priority AF can routinely detect and then achieve accurate focus on the person’s faces, no matter where he/she is inside the frame. In-Camera Red-Eye fix can automatically detect the irritating red-eye effect now and then caused by flash and pay off designed for it in-camera.
Apart from these features, it also incorporates a D-Lighting feature. It is an exposure correction technology that is dual with a face-priority AF function (capable of detecting up to five faces in a casing and an in-camera red-eye fix function. These three work together (at the press of the One-touch representation button) to capture the best likely likeness image. Though it’s not 100% correct, image sensors in the camera tell you when the clicked image is blurred a little too much. In case the subject is a still object, one can always use the BSS (Best blast Selector) that recognize and saves the sharpest shot mechanically out of ten chronological shots. The movie mode of the S51 lets you capture movies at resolutions of 640×480, 320×240, and 160×120 at 30 fps, as well as a stop movement movie mode.
The menu and options differ for most of the modes, thus get rid of the need for more buttons. The S51 features 10 scene modes and a few other shooting options, but doesn’t in fact allow a high amount of customization for a shot.
The Coolpix S51 offers USB 2.0 connectivity and can even be hooked up for TV display. The bundled Picture Project software makes editing pictures, organizing shots, and sharing images very easy and offers a range of plug-ins for image editing. It has 13MB of built-in memory and also supports use of a Secure Digital card to save your pictures on.
The design is something we’d all kill for; the slim and compact body and wavy design is a hit with everyone, while the menus and controls are just a thumb away. The scroll-wheel works like a charm and lets you travel through your images and settings with significant ease. The high-quality Nikkor ED lens gives the suppleness to zoom-out for beautiful scenery, zoom-in for tightly-composed portraits. The Optical VR (Vibration Reduction) is also a big plus.
The picture quality though is Achilles heel for the Nikon S51. The images we clicked with it did not turn out to be as sharp as one would wait for from an 8-megapixel camera. The color copy is on top of average at best. Overall, the images come into sight quite blurred and patchy. The images have a noticeable chromatic deviation, and the digital zoom just ends up giving you a pixilated view of things as well. Talking about ISO settings, it lets you click pictures using ISO settings from 100-1600. However, a noticeable quantity of sound starts creeping into the images at ISO400 and keeps receiving worse. The overall image quality is just about average and lacks a lot in terms of sharpness and dye saturation. Though, at times, it does let you click some decent snaps.
The camera takes a long time to start up and even longer to display the captured pictures on the LCD screen. The shot-to-shot times are around 3 seconds (average) and it keeps going up if you use the flash. After the size and shape of the S51, the LCD quality of this camera is the only economy grace; the display is big, sharp, gains fine, and doesn’t bother you even when using in bright outdoor light. in general, the image quality is standard only stipulation you’d think of the S51 as a 5-megapixel camera; too bad it isn’t.
Battery Life
The S51 comes bundled with a proprietary rechargeable Li-Ion EN-EL8 battery, which lasts for around 135 shots with negligible flash usage and surfing between shots and around 120 shots with some fiddling around with options and image surfing. These figures are deprived by any standard and you’d certainly need not one, but at least two extra batteries to back you up for any function or worse, vacation.
The Nikon S51 will put you back by at least Rs.14,000 (with a 1 GB SD card); but going by the presentation we’d rather advocate the Canon A720 IS which has come across as one of the best deals you can get for under 15K. It’s astonishing though, most of the S-series cameras have been overwhelmed with the same problems other than Nikon just doesn’t seem to have a answer yet. All said, the Nikon S51 scores well in a lot of areas, other than loses out in areas where it matters the most.
