 Exactly what I was hoping for |
| Review Date: October 18, 2008 |
| Reviewer: Bdub, Redmond, WA |
I recently sold my Nikon Coolpix 8700, and was looking for a new camera that gave me picture quality equal to or better, and was a much smaller camera. I like taking pictures, but I'm not a photo guy. I basically want to aim, press the button and let the magic happen. Taking a chance I decided to try this camera, and I wasn't disappointed.
It's got a lot of options to go beyond just auto mode if I want to dive into that. My main thing was the picture quality though and the quality of photos is excellent. My wife has a Canon A700 that takes decent pictures so we did a comparison just using the auto settings. A picture of our dog in the house with all the lights off in one room, a picture with one light on, and a picture with all the lights on. I figure if the low light pictures are good, then I'll be pretty happy with the daytime pictures.
While both cameras did a good job, our preference was the Nikon's photos. The colors were closer to what we expected they should look like, and to our eyes appeared more natural. There wasn't any noticeable noise in the photos, and the quality is very, very good.
The size of the camera is great. Shorter than my Blackjack cell phone, and about 2.5 times as thick. Definitely a camera that I could carry in the pocket of my jeans, or a jacket and not feel weighed down. |
Perfection
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| Review Date: January 5, 2009 |
| Reviewer: Christina Bartak, O'Neill, NE USA |
I recently got this wonderful camera for Christmas. Its perfect, just what I wanted. Its small, goodlooking. It takes great pictures. It has endless options for any type of picture taker.
I love the automatic scene selection. The camera decides by itself the perfect setting for the perfect picture id say about 90% of the time it makes the right choice. It is possible to confuse it if the picture has a lot of different things going on.
For instance if you are outside it will automatically switch to the outside setting and if u go inside it will automatically change to the inside setting without you having to do a thing.
One time when i was in the bar it got it wrong though. It changed it to night time setting automatically instead of party setting so it was a little blurry. No prob though, i deleted that picture and set it on what i wanted. C'mon, the camera cant know everything. Im hugely impressed at what it does know.
In general though I also love the automatic setting. Its foolproof. You simply cannot take a bad picture on the automatic setting. All of my pictures are clear and crisp.
OMG the editing! You can edit your pictures while they are still in your camera! I LOVE IT. You can turn a crappy picture into gold, the editing is limitless. You can take a picture of like 10 people at once then go and edit each face out to make portraits!
It zooms in great and the zoom does not mess with the quality of the picture, no graininess whatsoever.
Ive got lots of friends with similar type cameras and have seen their pictures and i swear up and down theirs compared to mine are complete crap.
Do not get anything else if you are looking for a "git r done" camera. Its so versatile. If your a serious photographer that wants something small and cute this camera is perfect. But if your like me and wanted something to carry in your purse to make memories wherever you are, its also perfect.
Its fast, and easy. Hardly any delay. I love smile finder too! It also has a ten second timer so everyone can be in the picture.
This is my first digital camera and im not embarressed to say i was worried about being able to run it. The owners manual is clear and easy to read. I highly recommend not just a thumb through but to actually sit down and read it. After you do that, its a breeze to run it : )
I have zero complaints. Its perfect for everyone! I give it an A+ hands down, everyone should own one!
LOVE IT! |
An amature's professional camera
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| Review Date: January 27, 2009 |
| Reviewer: Ashley L. Williams, North Carolina |
Although I've yet to use all the functions that make this camera unique (eg: quick shutter, smile shutter, etc), I've thoroughly enjoyed the image stabilization and scene auto selector. I must admit though, my favorite part about this camera (and also aesthetically how it looks) is the recognition of photos taken vertically and automatically rotating them to be viewed as you would normally review pics. It does this on both the display screen as soon as you've taken the pic and as well when you upload it to your computer.
If you're looking for a great compact sized camera with "professional-like" qualities, you've found it. I did a side by side comparison (on some website) of the specs of this camera and others that I was looking at (Sony Cybershot, etc), and overall, this seemed to surpass those. I'm no expert in the camera field, but Nikon's reputation holds true to this camera. |
i look like a pro
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| Review Date: January 14, 2009 |
| Reviewer: M. Ker, newport beach, ca |
| at 50+ there's a bit of shakin' going on with me. my photos were always a bit out of focus. the automatic optical vibration reduction feature is a brilliant solution. this is my 6th digital camera and i really believe it will be my last. started w/olympus 10 years ago, moved through sony, leica, canon and am now well settled with this nikon. stellar results. |
Great little camera, very pocketable and capable
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| Review Date: October 6, 2009 |
| Reviewer: Neil H., Middletown, CT United States |
I love the Nikon Coolpix models in this style and have bought a few of the earlier models. I have found all of them to be reliable and produce superb quality photos. The S710 is really an elegant piece of work, beautifully made and stylish.
Like other Coolpixes it has one feature that I believe is exclusive to Nikon, the Best Shot Selector. This is primarily useful in low light situations where the camera's shutter speed will be quite slow. The way it works is this: when BSS is turned on, you can hold the shutter release down and the camera will take up to 10 successive shots, and save only the sharpest one. Since hand-held slow-shutter shots always vary a good deal in sharpness from shot to shot, this feature, discarding all but the sharpest picture, serves as sort of a "poor man's image stabilization." This can be combined with the camera's VR (which is actual, optical image stabilization), the two working together to produce remarkably sharp photos in low light without the use of flash. Since all ultracompact cameras like this S710 have relatively weak built-in flash units, this is a most useful feature.
Another feature of the S710 that attracted me to it, and that my previous S-series Coolpixes don't have, is that like the much larger and more "serious" digital SLRs, it allows the user to set the camera in Program, Shutter priority, Aperture priority or full Manual mode. This will probably not mean much if anything to people who aren't really into photography, but for those of us who are used to having these controls on our SLRs and DSLRs it is a much appreciated feature. Along with these modes of course are the usual Coolpix scene modes, 16 of them -- Portrait, Landscape, Sports, Panorama, etc., etc. -- and also a Scene Auto Selector setting in which the camera will attempt to choose the scene mode best suited for the existing conditions and subject.
The lens is a sharp seven-element zoom with a range of 28mm wide angle (in 35mm camera equivalence) to 101mm short telephoto (equiv.) Maximum aperture is f/2.8 at the short end and f/5.6 at the long end. VR (stabilization) is optical, by the lens-shift method. In my opinion it would be very hard to improve on this lens for this type of camera.
Drawbacks? Nothing very serious. The buttons and rotary selector on the right side are somewhat cramped because of that big 3" LCD monitor, and for the same reason there's no optical viewfinder. This can be a slight problem in bright sunlight, but probably most users will be willing to give that up for the pleasure of the big monitor in a very small camera. Optical viewfinders in cameras of this type are never accurate anyway, while the LCD monitor is by nature perfectly accurate or extremely close to it.
Now frankly, I am dubious about putting 14.5 megapixels in such a small camera, primarily because cramming that many pixels into the little sensor means that each pixel is very tiny and therefore requires a good deal of amplification, and the result is increased electronic "noise" at anything much above the lowest ISO (sensitivity, equivalent to film speed in a film camera) setting. Unfortunately we are seeing this silly megapixel race in all brands of small cameras. The good news is that you can set the camera to a lower and more sensible resolution. I generally use mine at 5 megapixels and never at more than 8 Mp. These are the highest resolutions I am ever likely to need or want with this type of camera. Using higher resolutions only means getting fewer images on the SD card, slowing down the camera's image processing, taking up more space on the hard drive when the images are transferred to the computer, etc. -- all for no real benefit that I can see, and I have compared highly magnified images at various resolutions.
At the camera's Auto setting it will self-adjust the sensitivity to anywhere between ISO 100 and 1600, depending on the existing light, and favoring the ISO 100 end which is noise-free. The maximum ISO when set manually is a whopping 12,800. This means you take take pictures in very low light without flash, especially when using the camera's VR (which is turned on by default), though at this high ISO the image contains a great deal of noise -- even though the camera automatically reduces resolution to 3 megapixels at ISO 6400 and 12,800. It is fun to play with and can be useful in many situations where you can't or just don't want to use flash -- just be prepared for very grainy pictures. Most casual snapshooters will probably never use this feature.
Summing up: this is a terrific little camera for the enthusiast. It is really a lot more camera than the typical snapshooter needs, and it is just astonishing how Nikon has been able to pack all these features (I've only touched on a few of the most important ones) into such a slick, pocketable camera. I am sort of a collector-user, and have at least a couple of dozen compact and ultracompact digital cameras in addition to a half dozen DSLRs. Of the ultracompacts, this S710 is easily my favorite. |
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