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We clicked with:
Very easy to use
Vibrant colours
Very good flash system
Elegant looks
Alloy casework
Shots in the dark:
Tiny control surfaces
Lack of creative control modes
Plastic battery/card door
Colour balance shifts between modes
Price Comparison:
Nikon S510
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Nikon divides its Coolpix range into three distinct ranges, identified by the prefix 'L' for 'Life(style)', 'P' for 'Performance' and 'S' for 'Style'. Which makes the 8.1megapixel Nikon S510 part of the Style group - not that you really need that explained to you... its pink livery should give a pretty hefty clue. It's also small enough to fit into the tiniest of handbags without disturbing your Chihuahua. And it comes in a butch Urban Black and gender-non-specific silver.
The Nikon S510's body is a smart, squared off, slimline thing, with a strip flash above a zoom lens (equivalent to 35-105mm, f/2.8-4.7) that fits flush into the body when powered down. That coloured brushed alloy case (the battery/SD card door and some of the underside are in similarly coloured plastic) makes the camera look extremely elegant and, er, Style-ish.
Don't let the Style label fool you into thinking this is a stripped down design; Nikon ticks all the right feature boxes. The Nikon S510 features optical Vibration Reduction and the ability to reach up to ISO2000 (auto ISO between ISO 64 and ISO1600), face-priority recognition algorithms, a 2.5in LCD, movie and sound recording modes (be careful not to cradle the camera in your hand if recording sound, as the three little holes for the built-in microphone sit just to the left of the base of the lens), macro mode and the usual raft of 16 scene modes, all accessed from the main menu on screen. It even comes with in-camera red-eye and 'D-Lighting' fixes. There are sacrifices to Style though; those who want to creatively control the camera will find the lack of manual mode and shutter or aperture priority modes a bind, even if exposure compensation is easy.
Perhaps the reason the company chose to send the Nikon S510 out in its pink finish was so that it ended up going to reviewers with less stubby fingers than the usual blokeist cabal. That way, we might have missed that the buttons on the back (especially the zoom up/down keys) are too small. It's also relatively easy to hit both scroll and enter at the same time, as they are both on the same small thumbwheel. The thumbwheel interfaces with the menu superbly, though, because the set-up, operation and even image previews all appear on a carousel-like display that is intuitive to drive, like Apple's Dock.
The Nikon S510 is one of the first cameras to feature the company's EXPEED digital image processing system, initially announced on the brand's D3 and D300 DSLR. Information regarding what EXPEED actually does and how it's implemented here could be filed under 'fuzzy', but it appears that the concept means image processing optimised for each specific camera design, rather than shoe-horning a system that works on camera X into camera Y. The company also claims incredibly fast start-up and shutter-lag times; in the real world, the Nikon S510 was fractionally faster than its peers, but nowhere near the DSLR-like operation times claimed. I got about an image a second, faster when half-pressing the shutter, faster still by adding sport mode to the list.
However, the relatively fast power-up and operation coupled with the camera's ease of use and in particular its looks make this the ultimate party camera. It has a good battery life from that small lithium-ion battery and the flash range is excellent, both as a deceptively powerful main light source and as a surprisingly subtle fill flash. Images taken within the ISO64-ISO400 range are vibrant and saturated (although noise kicks in at ISO200 and above), but after this the Nikon S510 washes out the colours pretty quickly.
It has a typical Nikon ability to preserve highlights, which might make the pictures seem 'moody' compared to other designs, although D-Lighting brightens things up a lot. However, this is preferable to sections of the image reduced to detail-less white, especially as the Nikon S510 is good at preventing shadows from becoming too noisy. Automatic colour temperature control is mostly good - it's capable of recognising low-light tungsten - but be careful of changing modes mid-shoot, because each mode has a different overall colour balance and you'll see marked shifts.
We suspect most people will stick on one mode and use this camera as a point 'n' shoot, something the Nikon S510 excels at. If you can cope with the dinky-wee buttons and dials on the back and never want to delve into manual control, it's a great go-anywhere camera, and it is what the best-dressed handbag will be wearing this Christmas.
