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Manual Control Options
The Coolpix S4 is fundamentally not a manual camera. There is no direct control of aperture or shutter speed, and the EV control – the control for lightening or darkening the camera's exposure settings – is buried in the menus, and available only in the “Automatic” mode, not in the scene modes. The user can set ISO, white balance, and flash mode, which are all useful controls. Unfortunately, they don't add up to much without the basics of aperture and shutter speed, particularly because the Coolpix S4 doesn't even display its aperture or shutter speed anywhere on the LCD.
Focus
Auto Focus (7.0)
The Coolpix S4’s autofocus system works accurately, snapping into focus in most settings without a lot of sawing back and forth. Zoomed all the way to 63mm, its maximum telephoto setting, the Coolpix S4 could focus relying on only its AF illuminator beam, though it did have to search a bit.
Though the scene assist modes on the S4 activate specific autofocus areas, the only autofocus area choice the user can make directly is to choose Face-priority autofocus in Portrait mode.
Manual Focus (0.0)
The Coolpix S4 cannot be manually focused.
Metering (5.5)
The Coolpix S4 does not give the user any control over metering patterns, so it's not quite clear how the camera meters scenes. It seems to utilize Nikon’s matrix metering system, typically composed of 256-zones. In general, we found the Coolpix S4's exposures to be acceptable, akin the exposures from other cameras in automatic modes.
Exposure (7.0)
Oddly, the user has the most latitude to influence the Coolpix S4's settings in Automatic mode, when the exposure compensation menu item is enabled. Compensation is available from 2 stops under to 2 stops over the metered exposure in 1/3-stop increments.
White Balance (7.5)
The Coolpix S4 offers five white balance presets: Daylight, Incandescent, Fluorescent, Cloudy, and Flash. Typically, a single Fluorescent preset is a poor compromise, because fluorescent lights vary so much between types. It's welcome that the Coolpix S4 offers a custom white balance setting, so the user can balance the color while shooting. The S4 also offers an Auto white balance setting, which will help casual users get consistently acceptable results.
ISO (6.5)
The Coolpix S4 offers ISO settings from 50 to 400 as well as auto, though the manual indicates that it really should stay at 50. The auto setting will crank ISO up no further than 200, and even then the camera displays an icon warning that the captured image may be noisy.
Shutter Speed (0.0)
The Coolpix S4 won't let the user set the shutter speed, and it doesn't reveal the speed chosen by the automatic system. The camera shows a camera shake warning at low speeds.
Aperture (0.0)
The Coolpix S4's lens has a maximum aperture of f/3.5, though we only know this from the spec sheet. Nowhere in-camera does the S4 reveal what it has current set its aperture to. The user can't set the aperture, either.
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