Feb 06, 2009 09:26 PM
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Announced in August this year, Nikon's top-of-the-range Coolpix S710 is a luxury ultra-compact featuring a 14.5MP 1/1.72in sensor, a 3.6x zoom lens with a maximum aperture of f/2.8-5.6, optical lens-shift image stabilisation, and a 3in 230k wide-view monitor. It has an all-aluminium body, and is available in black, titanium or silver.
*Performance*
Overall performance is rather slow, taking nearly four seconds to start up, and with a four-second delay between shots. The continuous shooting mode is also very slow and awkward to use. At full resolution it is limited to a burst of only seven shots, which it takes in about five seconds, but it doesn't focus between shots, and worse there is no audio cue to let you know it's taking pictures
The auto focus system is very fast and works well in low light, a big improvement over some previous Nikon compacts
Overall picture quality is quite good, with plenty of fine detail, but it's not really that much better than a good 10 or 12 megapixel camera. Colour reproduction is generally accurate, but lacks depth and saturation. This is due to the cameras main problem; its extremely limited dynamic range. In high contrast shots both shadow and highlight detail are lost, and even the D-Lighting feature, applied in playback mode, does little to help. Image noise is also a problem, with noise visible at all ISO settings, and getting progressively worse as sensitivity increases.
