Review of the Nikon CoolPix S5

Many people dislike small cameras because they can be difficult to hold steady while taking pictures. However, a small camera does have its advantages. You can easily take this camera with you just about anywhere, as it easily fits in your pocket or purse. Don't let the small size fool you however, this camera takes some nice photos! You'll be impressed by the sleek design when you bring it home. Then you'll be impressed again by the quality of the photos.

This camera has a lot to offer with 6 megapixels, 3x optical zoom, movie clips, a face finder, internal memory, and a cute design. It definitely has enough features for the average point-and-shoot photographer. I would go as far to say that it also has enough features to be a good camera for a more serious photographer to take everywhere. You can't always bring an SLR along, but you can always fit this cutie in your pocket.

What I Like About This Camera

Overall, I absolutely love this camera. I love its portability due to its small size. I can put this camera in my bag for a trip to the park or I can put it in the pocket of my overalls while volunteering with sea lions. However, many cameras nowadays offer a nice small size, but the features of this camera set it apart. I love that this camera has internal memory. I never thought that this would be useful at all when I bought this camera. Why on earth would anyone want to use internal memory? I love memory cards and I have several of them. So at first, I only used this camera with Secure Digital memory cards. This was easy enough. Just slip in a memory card, take photos, take out the memory card, put the card into your memory card reader, copy photos to computer, delete photos, and put the card back into the camera. Seems pretty easy to me. Except for the fact that I am not an organized person by any standards. So sometimes I will just leave the memory card in the card reader and forget about it until I need it again. I never forgot to put a card in the camera though. That is, I never forgot until I went on a 2 hour trip out to the observatory. Then I was thankful for the internal memory, which only gave me about 15 photos at 6 megapixels. Still, 15 photos is better than nothing and not many cameras sport this nice feature. Whether you'll use the internal memory or not, you probably will at some point be forced to use this camera without a flash. The nice thing is, when you're shooting in low light conditions where you can't use a flash (such as a museum), this camera will blink a "shaky hand" figure on the screen if you are moving too much. If you move so much that the picture is blurred beyond saving, the camera will ask you if you want to even bother saving the blurry image. Even if you never shoot in low light conditions, you probably shoot close-ups every now and then. This camera has absolutely terrific macro (but of course, it's a Nikon!). I have taken photos of guinea pigs where you can see their tiny nose hairs. While you might not want to see Squeaker's nose hairs, you will surely appreciate this feature when taking photos of flowers. You might be saying to yourself at this point, "Okay, all these features sound well and good, but I like to have fun every now and then!" Well, for fun things to try, try changing the color settings. You can change to vivid colors, black and white, sepia, or (get this) cyanotype. I have never even seen cyanotype on a still camera before. Still not enough for you? This camera also does neat little short movies and voice recording. While Canon cameras are generally more well known for their scene modes, this Nikon sports some interesting scene modes as well. Scene modes on the Nikon CoolPix S5 include: party/indoor, beach/snow, sunset, museum, fireworks show, backlight, and panorama assist. That's not all folks! You might have noticed that portraits seemed to be missing. There are separate portrait modes as well, such as: portrait left, portrait right, close-up portrait, and portrait of a couple. For groups, the landscape mode includes: group left and group right. There is a mode for sports and sports spectators. There is even a mode for night portraits, for those of you who aren't content to shoot portraits during the day. I guess after seeing this impressive list, you can't really say that Canon has the market cornered on scene modes anymore. In addition to boasting about scene modes, you often see ads for cameras boasting about their face finder. This camera has a face finder as well. So even if you're a beginner, you're all set with this camera. It's pretty easy to use, but still has enough nice features to be considered useful to more serious photographers.

What I Don't Like About This Camera

When I first got this camera, I didn't like it. I guess a few of the features take some getting used to. First of all, I did not like the tiny "on/off" button. I would turn it on and then wait, only to realize I had not succeeded in pressing the tiny button. If you have long fingernails, you might have some difficulty turning this camera on and off. I have very short fingernails though, so I got used to that after awhile. However, one thing that did confuse me a lot in the beginning was the zoom. You may be used to the W/T (wide angle/telephoto) zooms that involve either two separate buttons or two easily distinguishable sides. This camera's zoom works much like a very tiny joystick. You move it side to side and try not to go too far the wrong way with it. I wished that the zoom feature was either done with a bigger joystick, or like the older CoolPix cameras that Nikon made. In any case, I did eventually get used to that as well. If you can't get used to something like that, consider another camera. Those two problems were basically the only problems I had with this camera. This camera has been very easy to use for the most part.

There are a lot of digital cameras out there that seem to sacrifice quality for size. That isn't the case with this small camera. This camera is another fine example of Nikon's many digital cameras available. The Nikon CoolPix S5 is cute, compact, and portable, yet still offers great digital photos to anyone who uses it. I would highly recommend this camera as the camera you take with you everywhere.