Nikon CoolPix S630 – Good all round package

Nikon CoolPix S630 is a pretty good camera – the photo quality is pleasant, the design is good and the shooting options too are respectable. The performance could have been better but other than that, the S630 is a nice compact camera with extra zoom range and I really liked it.

Nikon CoolPix S630 is a bit thicker as compared to other Nikon S-series of cameras. The extra depth is consumed for 7x zoom lens out front but the camera will still easily fit in to your small handbag or jeans pocket. There are five different color options to choose from – red, silver, purple, blue and black. Also, it looks pretty stylish. I liked the big thumb rest; it comes handy while using zoom ring on the camera’s top.

Below this, there are the Play and Mode buttons on the Nikon CoolPix S630 followed by directional pad/scroll wheel and 2 additional buttons for settings menu and for deleting the photos in playback or shooting mode. The controls are pretty straightforward and menu navigation is pretty easy. Simple tug on the right will bring up Help system. You can adjust it for making it slow or fast through the directional pad or scroll wheel.

For the shooting options and controls, the Nikon CoolPix S630 feature set is not really deep and hence I won’t recommend this camera to people who like to experiment a lot. The recording modes are pretty lean; the Auto mode will give you a lot of shooting control which includes the ability to limit ISO range that this camera uses. Nikon CoolPix S630 also has 3 specialized shots modes. The Smile mode will snap a picture when ever it sees a smiling face and there is Blink Proof feature too where in the camera clicks another shot if it detects that the subject has blinked.

For capturing continuous content, there is Sport Continuous mode but it lowers the camera resolution to three megapixels and increases sensitivity to minimum of ISO 640. This creates extra image noise and also causes well-lit/outdoor pics to overexpose. Finally, there is High Sensitivity mode for shooting in low light conditions but this one too drops the sensor resolution to three megapixels and sets range of ISO from 640 to 3,200. The instruction manual of the camera does warn you of all this and it also explains when to use special settings. The performance is the only disappointing thing on the Nikon CoolPix S630 but it is not a deal breaker.