Nikon Coolpix S600

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Features

Considering the size of this shooter, the 2.7-inch display is very generous. The size of the screen is also an upgrade from the S500, which has only a conventional 2.5-inch LCD.

A hand-held shot of an evening sky. Shutter speed was at 1/15 second but note that the moon is still relatively sharp.
(click for larger image)

The S600 has a 28mm wide-angle lens with 4x optical zoom and, compared with its predecessor the S500 (which has a 35mm lens with 3x optical zoom), is a much-lauded upgrade. Even though it may not be ultra-wide (like Panasonic's Lumix FX36 or Samsung's NV24HD), it is sufficient for capturing landscapes or group shots.

There were times when we didn't want to use the built-in flash unit to illuminate the scene. One situation was at a birthday celebration when the flash would have killed the mood of the warm candlelight glow. With a maximum ISO sensitivity of 3,200, it was possible to capture that particular mood with the S600 (at the expense of getting a noisier picture).

The shooter utilizes optical image stabilizer; for Nikon it is the VR (Vibration Reduction) system. This worked well, and with it we were still able to hand-hold the camera at a shutter speed of 1/30 second or lower to take relatively sharp pictures at 28mm.

The Active Child mode will track and follow a moving subject.
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It seems the S600 has two different types of face detection. One of them is the Face-priority AF which will automatically seek up to 12 faces within the frame, focus and set the proper exposure for them. The other face detection is actually one of the scene modes--Active Child. This mode will follow and track moving subjects, focusing on them as they move. While it may seem gimmicky, it worked well when we turned the camera on a four-year-old running around the room.

The S600 also allows you to record a voice clip to attach to a particular picture. While most people probably won't use it, we foresee holiday makers tagging their photos with short voice captions on where they took that picture.

A comparison of an image with and without D-Lighting applied.
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The shooter incorporates D-Lighting technology which Nikon said can recover a certain amount of details that may be lost in the highlights or shadow regions in a high-contrast picture when taken with a conventional digital camera.

The point-and-shoot has 45MB of internal memory which, by today's standard is quite little. So invest in a SD/SDHC flash memory if you want to take more pictures.

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