Nikon Coolpix S9100

Intro, Features And Specs

After impressing us with its Coolpix S8000 and S8100, Nikon has launched the upgrade to its compact zoom camera line-up. Powered by a longer zoom lens and the same backlit CMOS sensor under its hood, the Nikon Coolpix S9100 puts itself as a good contender in the compact zoom market. It looks like a viable option for those who are looking for a versatile travel compact zoom camera.

Features and Specs

The Coolpix S9100 carried over many of the winning features from its predecessors - a 1/2.3-inch backlit CMOS sensor that packs 12.1 mega pixels, a sharp 3-inch LCD with 921k dots resolution and a long 18x optical zoom lens, plus a few more creative shooting modes and effects. Speaking of the lens, the 18x optical lens has the same aperture F3.5 -5.9 at wide angle and F4.5-81 at the tele end and its focal length ranges from 25mm to 450mm which is the longest zoom for a compact zoom camera in the current market. For image stabilization, Nikon employs a combination of image sensor shift and Electronic VR technology, full HD 1080p video recording at 25fps and 720p HD video recording, with other options like Slow/ Fast motion recording ranging from 15 fps to 240fps. Like most compacts today, there is HDMI-out to connect and view the contents on HDTV.

The camera comes with a pop-up flash that has options like auto, auto with red-eye, fill flash, and slow sync. The exposure metering system includes 256-segment matrix, center weighted and spot metering. There is no full manual focusing system, but the Coolpix offers options to select one of the 99 focus areas in the LCD monitor and its AF area modes comprises auto, face priority, center and subject tracking. ISO speed range includes ISO 160, 200, 400, 800, 1600 and 3200.

Shooting modes do not include aperture/shutter priority modes or manual shooting mode which is disappointing for a camera of this caliber. The shooting mode options available are Auto, Effects, Continuous and 15 different scene modes. The mode dial offers shortcuts for auto scene selector, night landscape, night portrait and backlighting. Face detection (up to 12 faces) with Smile Timer is also included. Among the scene modes, Easy Panorama that offers effortless 180 degree and 360 degree panorama shooting aided by the auto-stitch guide is worth mentioning. The Coolpix S9100 has two continuous shooting modes - Continuous H (five 12 megapixels images at 9.5fps) and Continuous L (24 12 megapixels images at 1.8 fps) which are both useful for capturing fast moving subjects. Descriptions for each scene mode can also be viewed by pulling the zoom lever. The macro mode enables the camera to shoot subjects as close as 4cm. One handy feature is that while in Auto Mode or Continuous Shooting mode, the camera offers options to change brightness, vividness and hue.

The in-camera image editing options are quite powerful as it gives you options like Quick retouch, add filter effects, frames, skin softening, D-Lighting and creating small pictures for e-mail.