Nikon Coolpix S710 14.5MP Digital Camera with 3.6x Wide Angle Optical Vibration Reduction (VR) Zoom (Brilliant Silver)
Nikon Coolpix S710 14.5MP Digital Camera with 3.6x Wide Angle Optical Vibration Reduction (VR) Zoom (Brilliant Silver)
Nikon’s slim, stylish Coolpix S710 combines 14.5 effective megapixels with a 3.6x wide-angle optical Zoom-Nikkor glass lens for stunning prints as large as 16 x 20 inches. The sleek all-metal design makes it easy to carry, and the huge, bright 3.0-inch LCD offers makes it easy to compose and share pictures. The Coolpix S710, with Nikon’s EXPEED image processor and Optical VR Image Stabilization, gets you sharp pictures. You can get creative with Program, Shutter, Aperture, and full Manual exposure modes. The Coolpix S710 is one digital power play!
Coolpix S710 Highlights
14.5-megapixel resolution
Capture stunning prints as large as 16 x 20 inches. Sharp resolution captures the finest details, crop creatively and produce incredible enlargements.
3.6x wide-angle optical Zoom-NIKKOR glass lens
Versatile zoom range that gets you close to the action while still capturing expansive landscapes. Nikkor optics provide exceptional pictures. NIKKOR lenses are built on a proud heritage of producing precision camera optics that deliver superb color and razor-sharp results.
New EXPEED image processing
Ensures high-quality pictures with stunning color and sharpness. Nikon’s comprehensive digital imaging processing concept incorporates the know-how and technologies accumulated throughout our long history of photographic and digital imaging development. EXPEED is custom-tuned for Coolpix, Applied optimized technologies render natural-looking pictures of incredible quality and quick response so you won’t miss that special moment.
Huge, bright 3.0-inch high-resolution LCD
Makes it easy to compose and share your pictures. In addition, the high-contrast and anti-reflection coating on the screen assist in clear viewing, even in direct sunlight.
Optical VR image stabilization
Compensates for camera shake to prevent blur producing clearer, sharper results in lower light or unsteady conditions. In addition, the benefits of Nikon’s VR system extend to faster framing on the monitor and smoother action when using the movie mode.
Program, Aperture, Shutter, and Manual Exposure Modes
Allow you to have the ultimate control over your pictures. Now, you can adjust the camera’s settings for any type of lighting conditions and get as creative as you want.
Scene Auto Selector
Automatically recognizes the scene in your picture and adjusts the camera setting. Just set the camera to the Scene Auto Selector and the camera changes the settings according to the scene you are taking a picture of, automatically! Smile Mode to help ensure smiles on the faces of loved ones.
Auto adjusts up to ISO 3200
Lets you keep shooting, even in low light creating new opportunities to take sharper, more natural-looking photos in low- light conditions. Plus, using pixel addition, ISO sensitivity can be set to an amazing ISO 6400 and ISO 12800 (image sizes of 3mb or lower are required).
Nikon Image Innovations
Include In-Camera Red-Eye Fix, which will automatically look for and fix most instances of red-eye. You may never see red-eyes again! Face Priority AF is Nikon’s face-finding technology that quickly finds and focuses on up to 12 faces in a group portrait. D-Lighting will rescue those photos that are too dark for printing by enhancing the underexposed areas of the picture while not touching the properly exposed areas.
16 scene modes
Enjoy optimized shooting in various settings. Choose from: Food, Portrait, Landscape, Sports, Night Portrait, Party/Indoor, Beach/Snow, Sunset, Dusk/Dawn, Night Landscape, Close-up, Panorama Assist, Museum, Fireworks Show, Copy or Back Light modes. Match your current shooting situation with one of these Scene Modes and the camera will make the necessary adjustments giving you an incredible picture, automatically.
High-quality TV movies with sound
Now just a press of a button away with your Coolpix. Record TV-quality movies with sound; duration is limited only by the available space on your SD/SDHC card. Connect your camera to your TV and you have instant home-movies!
What’s in the Box
- Rechargeable Li-ion Battery EN-EL12
- Battery Charger MH-65
- USB Cable UC-E6
- Audio Video Cable EG-CP14
- Strap AN-CP19
- Software Suite CD-ROM
Nikon Coolpix S710 14.5MP Digital Camera Review
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.
