Nikon Coolpix S4000

Design & Appearance

The degree of hey-look-at-me varies a bit depending on your choice of color (champagne silver shown here, black, red, pink and plum), but this isn't a particularly showy camera. It has nicely curved lines, a slender body and a straightforward, practical look overall.

Size & Handling

We found the S4000 appealing to hold and maneuver. It measures a slim 3.8 x 2.3 x 0.8 inches, and weighs 4.7 oz. including the battery and memory card, which is quite light. Of course, the most significant handling question is the touch-screen user interface, which is very much a matter of personal preferences. Certainly, for some operations, it provides an exceptional level of control. Focusing on a particularly individual in a picture by just poking at his or her face with your finger feels natural and works very well. On the other hand, scrolling through menu selections seems simpler, to us, when you have a physical four-way controller to push or a dial to spin, instead of poking repeatedly at the LCD screen. And, of course, while we consider ourselves masters of the hygienic arts, pressing and prodding and stroking and poking an LCD screen is inevitably going to leave smudges and greasy fingermarks.

The S4000 feels good in your hands, and doesn't take up much room in your pocket/

Menu

There are a few ready-to-push controls on the top level while shooting, as shown here: adjust the flash, the self-timer/drive mode, turn macro focusing on and off. (INFO, by the way, adjusts what's shown on screen). To change most of the core settings, though, you'll have on the MENU icon and bring up the main menu shown below.

The shooting screen.

With its simple control scheme, the S400 fits all its recording options into just two menu screens. One nice touch (literally) is the ? button, which brings up brief text descriptions of your current options.

The main shooting menu.

Ease of Use

For the most part, the S4000 is point-and-shoot simple to manage, though it takes a bit of getting used to before it feels comfortable. On most cameras, there are at least a few buttons that take you directly to key shooting settings: ISO, white balance, exposure compensation, etc. Here your options aren't readily visible until you've navigated down a bit into the menu system. And the meaning of some options aren't instinctively obvious. Nobody is going to figure out what BSS mode is without reading the manual, for example (oh sure, you can make up lots of possibilities, but we're trying to keep it classy here). Similarly, the Touch Shutter options are represented by three icons, with no explanatory on-screen text. With a limited number of available controls, a little obscurity isn't the end of the world, but less obscurity is always better when it comes to camera controls.