By Leonard Goh
28/10/2008
URL: http://asia.cnet.com/reviews/digitalcameras/0,39005881,43859006p,00.htm

The Coolpix S60 marks several firsts for Nikon. Not only is it the company's first touchscreen shooter, it is possibly the only digital camera to date that has only two hardware buttons. While the innovative interface did score brownie points with us, there are certain things such as the zoom which we wished we had more control over. The physique and specifications of this shooter pit it against Sony's Cyber-shot DSC-T500, which has stereo audio recording and HD video capture. However, the playback mode on the Nikon won us over with its iPhone-like intuitiveness.

Design

One look at the S60 and people will ask: "Where are the buttons?" This shooter features a minimalist design by having only two buttons--the power and shutter--found on top of the camera. As for other controls, they are all incorporated into the lush 3.5-inch touchscreen which takes up the entire rear estate.

The "wave" design is Nikon's trademark for its slim shooters, with the part which houses the lens thicker than the rest of the point-and-shoot. While this facilitates the engineering of the optics, we found it odd that the handgrip end is slimmer than the rest of the camera body.

Although there is no thumb rest on the rear, users don't have to worry that they will accidentally activate controls when they place their thumb on the screen. This is because the interface is designed such that most of the controls are found on the left side, with the zoom icons conveniently located at the bottom right for easy access.

While Sony's Cyber-shot DSC-T500 may appeal to the tech-savvy with its boxy, mechanical look, the S60 seems poised to appeal to ladies with its glossy facade and relatively slim footprint.

Features

The most interesting aspect of the S60 is its user interface. Nikon has opted for a majority of the controls to be accessed via the touchscreen display which we found to be one of the most responsive panels we've tested.

In playback mode, we could swipe our fingers from left to right or vice versa to scroll through the images. To zoom in, we tapped on the image and dragged our fingers around the screen to see different parts of it. A built-in accelerometer automatically orientates the picture depending on how we held the shooter. This is similar to what you get on Apple's iPod touch and iPhone, and we think this is a really ingenious implementation which made our experience with the S60 more enjoyable. While it lags a bit in actual use, we liked the feature nonetheless.

The included stylus will come in handy when you want to scribble or make notes on pictures. We liked that when you are done personalizing the image, the shooter will save it as another lower-resolution (3-megapixel) copy, leaving your original version intact.

However, there are some downsides to the UI. By foregoing actual physical buttons, we could zoom only by touching the icons on the screen. While these responded well, there was a lack of control over how fast or slowly we could zoom. Also, certain functions such as ISO sensitivity and image size were hidden within the menu and we would have liked it better if we could access them by tapping on their icons.

As with Sony's Smile Shutter which automatically takes a shot when a smile is detected within the frame, the S60 has a similar function called Smile Timer. However, unlike its competitor, the Nikon doesn't have options for setting the sensitivity of the smiles. Nevertheless, it worked well in our Lab tests.

Besides the funky touchscreen and its corresponding functions, the S60 is pretty much your average point-and-shoot. The 5x optical zoom travels vertically within the shooter, thus eliminating the need for a protruding lens. The optical image stabilizer system (Vibration Reduction) worked well when we tested it and we could snap relatively sharp pictures at 1/20 second.

Video recording-wise, it captures in VGA (640 x 480 pixels) with monoaural audio. Its competitor, the Cyber-shot DSC-T500, can do much more with 720p-quality (1,280 x 720-pixel) recording and stereo sonic pickup.

A rechargeable lithium-ion battery powers the shooter which accepts SD/SDHC media cards for storage on top of its 20MB of internal memory. An HDMI port allows for displaying pictures on external HD display panels.

Performance

The S60 isn't the speediest camera around when it comes to startup time. It took a good 2.5 seconds to boot up from power down, but surprisingly shutter lag measured a fast 0.05 second.

In Continuous mode, the point-and-shoot will rattle off at about 1.2 frames per second for seven shots, but this timing is dependent on the scene you point the shooter at. A low-contrast scene typically took longer to focus between shots compared to high-contrast scenes. Also, Distortion Control must be deactivated for the burst mode to work.

The literature listed 140 shots for the S60's juice pack, but our excessive tinkering with the playback mode caused the battery to drain faster than usual.

Image Quality

While the S60 did score for its innovative operations, it did not do as well in the image quality department. We compared pictures taken with the Nikon with samples from Sony's T500 and generally favored the latter.

The S60 has a lowest ISO sensitivity of 64, and it maxes out at ISO 3,200. From ISO 64 to 200, images were generally free from digital artifacts and appropriate amount of detail were rendered. The images were not oversharpened and had a film-like feel to them. At ISO 400, we could tell that images were a tad too blurry for our liking, but they were still usable. At ISO 800, we could not really make out details in the pictures, and needless to say, pictures captured at any ISO higher than 800 will look as though they have been smeared with watercolor paint.

In terms of white balance, the S60 was accurate for outdoor shots but faltered when we took pictures under fluorescent lighting. Most of our indoor shots had a slight yellow-green tinge to them.

The onboard flash was generally accurate, although there were several occasions when it was a little too harsh and did not accurately expose for the background. However, setting it to the appropriate scene mode did help to balance the flash output slightly.

Conclusion

While we were impressed by the S60's full touchscreen operations and iPhone-like navigation interface in its playback mode, the image quality was a bit of a disappointment. At S$699, it is priced similar to Sony's superslim Cyber-shot DSC-T77. For S$100 more, you can get the T500 which has better image quality and an HD video-recording function. But the Nikon's user interface is really quite attractive, and for those who prefer stylish shooters, the S60 may just fit the bill.