The Nikon Coolpix S1 is a 5.1 megapixels ultra-compact digital camera with white, silver and black options for its body color. It’s extremely stylish and feels like a cigarette holder inside the pocket – being just 89.9mm wide by 57.5mm high by 19.7mm deep and weighting only 118 g. Its Nikkor ED lens (with a focal range of 5.8mm to 17.4 mm which is equivalent to 35mm to 105 mm) offers a 3x optical focus with a twist: the lens doesn’t come out but instead travels inside the length of the body, using a prism to make the light hit the CCD sensor. This system was pioneered on the Minolta Dimage-X and is responsible for the Coolpix S1 thinness. The lens is protected by a cover which opens whenever the camera is on – however the lens gets more dirty than usual and requires an antistatic flannel at hand to be kept clean.
Overall, the Nikon Coolpix S1 is a stylish metal camera ideal to whatever situation where camera bulkiness is an issue. If you are a sharpshooter and have no inclination to manual adjust your camera, that’s the ideal cam for you.
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Very thin, very smooth, and yet equipped with a 3X optical zoom and a 5.1 megapixel image size, the Nikon Coolpix S1 is yet another camera for the market place segment that attaches great value to the portability of their camera.
The major advantage of the S1’s design is that it allows the camera to be slipped into a pocket, and be carried around effortlessly. Still, even with its extremely compact size, the Coolpix S1 has a generally good ergonomic design, and the external controls which are clustered close together because of the large LCD monitor, turn out to be surprisingly useable.
The large 5.1 megapixel image, plus the flexibility of 3X optical zoom, makes the Coolpix S1 yet another good example of the miniaturization advantage that digital photography technology has brought us.
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The Coolpix S1 – Nikon’s first ultra-thin camera — is a stylish camera that ultimately fell behind the competition in several areas. The S1 has a compact, all-metal body with a 3X zoom lens (using folded optics technology like several other cameras in this class) and a 2.5″ LCD display. The camera is well built and can go just about anywhere. While it’s large, the LCD wasn’t terribly impressive in low light, and the resolution could’ve been higher too. The camera has an AF-assist lamp, but I wasn’t thrilled with how it performed in those situations.
The Coolpix is pretty much a point-and-shoot camera, with the only manual control being for white balance. There are numerous scene modes including several which provide framing guidelines that help you compose your shots. The only downside here is that the slowest shutter speed available is just two seconds, which may not be long enough for some night scenes.
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Tiny size, image quality that’s acceptable but not outstanding, and a lack of manual controls make the ultracompact Nikon Coolpix S1 a good choice for snapshot photographers who want a good selection of fun features but don’t want to make many decisions on their own.
This Nikon’s strong points are abundant scene modes, a 3X zoom lens that doesn’t protrude during use, a postshot fix that automatically brightens dark backgrounds, and a clever Face-Priority autofocus mode that ensures that the closest human to the camera will be sharp and clear. But with its limited shutter-speed range of 2 seconds to 1/350 second, you won’t be using it for long exposures or very fast action.
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Nikon’s Coolpix line of consumer digicams has always been well-received, appreciated for their image quality and ease of use. The Coolpix S1 starts a new design trend for the company, packing a lot of features, a 5.1-megapixel CCD with 3x zoom lens, and a surprisingly large 2.5-inch LCD into a very small, attractive package. The result is a pretty successful subcompact digital camera design. The Nikon S1 shares some common limitations with other tiny subcompact models, in the form of limited battery life and a tendency to produce soft corners in its images, but these shortcomings represent more or less universal tradeoffs required by the tiny form factor. Image-wise, the Nikon Coolpix S1 delivers very bright, snappy-looking photos with vibrant, hue-accurate color and plenty of detail for making large prints. The S1’s color is indeed very bright: This will appeal to the majority of consumers, who have again and again shown a strong preference for bright color, but may be a bit overdone for those accustomed to the more restrained color of higher-end and professional digital camera models. - See our test photos photo gallery to make up your own mind: Color rendering is a very personal preference, so it’s important to let your own eyes be the judge, rather than relying on sterile test data. The Nikon S1’s high-ISO performance was a little deceptive. Viewed 1:1 on a computer screen, its ISO 400 images looked very soft, and there was a fair bit of image noise visible. When printed though, the softness wasn’t nearly as apparent, at least up to print sizes of 8×10 inches or so, and the noise likewise was less visible than it was on-screen.
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