Nikon Coolpix S50c

By Philip Ryan
Jun 7, 2007

Some things never change. Some other things, such as Nikon's wireless S-series cameras, change a little bit at a time. Nikon's new Coolpix S50c is a whole lot like the S7c that the company offered last year. It boasts a 7.2-megapixel CCD imaging sensor, a 3x optical, 38mm-to-114mm-equivalent f/3.3-to-f/4.2 zoom lens, a 3-inch LCD, and houses it all in a cute, curvy-yet-slim silver casing. Oh yeah, and it can wirelessly upload (via built-in 802.11 b/g) your images to Nikon's CoolPix Connect 2 Website and send emails to your friends and family so they can retrieve said photos for free. Other than some slight, but welcomed, control changes, the biggest and best difference between this and last year's model is the addition of optical image stabilisation instead of the much-less-effective electronic stabilisation found in the S7c.

Performance
To Nikon's credit, the S50c's wireless functioned flawlessly when we used it with a wireless router. Set up was simple, and fairly quick, on the camera. After we sent our first picture e-mail, we got an e-mail from CoolPix Connect 2 that prompted us to complete our registration at Nikon's Web site, where we input the camera's key (found in the wireless portion of the setup menu) and we were ready to go.

In our lab tests, the S50c turned in sluggish results. It took 3.9 seconds to start up and capture its first JPEG. Subsequent JPEGs took 2.4 seconds between shots with the flash turned off and 2.5 seconds between shots with the flash turned on. Shutter lag measured 0.9 second in our high-contrast test, which mimics bright shooting conditions, and 2.1 seconds in our low-contrast test, which mimics dim shooting conditions. In continuous shooting mode, we were able to capture 7.2-megapixel JPEGs at an average of 1.39 frames per second, or VGA-sized JPEGs at an average of 1.68 fps.

Typical continuous-shooting speed (frames per second) (Longer bars indicate better performance)

Nikon Coolpix S50c 1.4 Casio Exilim EX-Z70 0.8 Canon Digital IXUS 75 1.6

Shooting speed (Shorter bars indicate better performance)

Typical shot-to-shot

Time to first shot

Shutter lag

Nikon Coolpix S50c 2.4 3.9 0.9 Olympus FE-240 7.3 4 0.8 Canon Digital IXUS 75 1.6 1 0.5

Image Quality
Image quality was good, but not outstanding, for an ultra-compact. Colours were generally accurate and the camera's automatic white balance system did a decent job of neutralising colours under incandescent lighting, though our test shots retained a very slight yellowish cast.

Of course, some people prefer this, since it retains a hint that you weren't shooting in daylight. The camera's tungsten and fluorescent settings did a good job with their respective light sources, and the manual white balance turned in the most neutral results of all. Images from the S50c weren't the sharpest we've seen, but they still have plenty of fine details and we were pleased to find only very minor coloured fringing.

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At the camera's lowest sensitivity of ISO we saw almost no noise, but at ISO 200 noise crept in slightly, manifesting as tiny white specks, but it was only really viewable on monitors and not in prints. At ISO 400, noise grew and included some larger off-colour speckles. While Nikon's noise reduction algorithms smooth it out some, it still has a minor appearance in some prints.

At ISO 800, noise obscures a large amount of finer detail when viewing on monitors and a significant amount of shadow detail is lost, though smaller prints should still be passable.

Overall, the S50c is a very nice ultracompact camera, though its wireless capabilities could be more useful. Since Nikon offers the S50, which is basically the exact same camera without the wireless, you're probably better off saving some money and opting for that, unless you think you'll get a really big kick out of uploading images through your home wireless router.

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