Nikon Cool Pix Silver Pocket Camera
According to Joshua Goldman of Cnet.com, the Nikon Coolpix S630 is a nice camera.The photo quality is pleasant enough (though not perfect), its design is excellent, and it has a respectable set of shooting options. It could be a little faster, but otherwise the S630 is just a good compact with some extra zoom range.
The S630 is a little thicker than usual for Nikon’s S-series cameras. That extra depth is for the 7x zoom lens out front. It fits easily in a pocket or small handbag. It comes in five colors–black, blue, purple, silver, and red.
To operate it there are Mode and Play buttons followed by a scroll wheel/directional pad and two more buttons for the settings menu and deleting photos while shooting or in playback. Controls are very straightforward and even if the menus aren’t much to look at, they’re easy to navigate and a simple tug to the right on the zoom pulls up the Help system.
Joshua goes on to say that performance is on the slow side for the S630. It takes just shy of 4 seconds from power on to first shot. Its shot-to-shot time is 3.1 seconds; using the flash adds 0.3 second to that time. Shutter lag is OK at 0.5 second in bright conditions and 0.8 in dimly lit situations. In its regular continuous shooting mode at full resolution, the camera can capture 0.8 frames per second.
The S630′s photo quality is good. If you’re viewing photos primarily on a computer monitor, digital photo frame, or making prints up to 10×13 inches, you likely won’t be disappointed. Going any larger poses problems in sharpness and resolution and the faster the speed the more delicate the picture quality.
If you are considering an average compact point-and-shoot with a more typical 3x zoom, the Nikon Coolpix S630 is a good place to start. It’s not particularly fast and the photos are merely good, but it is an excellent design, has a very good feature set, and it’s easy to use.
