Nikon Coolpix S500

Viewfinder (0.0)
There isn’t room for an optical viewfinder on the Nikon S500, so it uses the live view on the LCD screen instead. The LCD is nicely sized at 2.5 inches and has great resolution. The great resolution, coupled with a 60 fps live feed, make viewing even the fastest moving subjects a beautiful sight. Most digital cameras have a 30 fps feed that is fine until subjects move, and then they look jittery. Thus, the live preview looks great except for the inaccuracy of what it shows. The live preview only shows 96 percent of what is recorded in both the horizontal and vertical directions. If you need to tightly frame subjects – or in our case, test charts – you’ll have to rub a rabbit’s foot and dance to the god of cropped images and hope that it comes out right.

LCD Screen (7.25)
The Nikon Coolpix S500’s 2.5-inch LCD screen provides live preview and reviewing capabilities. The screen has 230,000 pixels, so subjects look nice and smooth. The contrast and colors look good on the screen. The S500’s LCD is outfitted with an anti-reflection coating but is still tough to view outdoors, partially because of the limited viewing angle. This is one of those cameras that has to be held straight in front of the eyes to see anything. The LCD has a great 60 fps live feed for previewing and snapping pictures, but it isn’t perfectly accurate. Reviewing images has 100 percent accuracy though. This drives people like us crazy. In many of the tests we run the camera through, we have to line up charts perfectly in the frame. When the picture is taken, the recorded image appears and it has more than what we framed in the picture! This is frustrating for us, but shouldn’t be a problem for most casual users.

The LCD screen can be modified in the setup menu to show different types of information. Show Info, Auto Info, Hide Info, and Framing Grid are available. There is also a brightness adjustment with +/- 2 options in whole steps. Users can see the effect of the brightness adjustment on a picture of a woman in a yellow hat shown in this menu. This brightness adjustment helped viewing outdoors, but it was hard to find it when the lighting was so harsh.

Overall, the LCD screen is nicely sized, has great resolution, a fabulous 60 fps live feed, and great contrast and color. However, the limited viewing angle is a throwback to cameras from three years ago.

Flash (6.0)
The Nikon Coolpix S500’s flash is just above the lens and shifted slightly right. The specs indicate that the flash reaches 1 foot 8 inches to 24 feet 7 inches when the lens is zoomed out and 1 foot 8 inches to 13 feet 1 inch when zoomed in. These specs are impressive for a slim digital camera’s flash, but the flash appears spotty. The corners of the frame are very dark and the bottom fourth of the image is darker than the rest. All of the edges are a little dank, but the bottom is definitely the darkest.

The S500 has a sensor flash system that moves slowly especially when the red-eye reduction or slow sync modes are selected. The flash modes are auto, auto with red-eye reduction, off, on, and auto with slow sync. The last option’s icon looks like the flash should be forced on with the slow sync option, but it didn’t fire all the time so it must be an automatic feature that fires only when the camera thinks it’s necessary.

Red eyes still appeared in a few pictures – probably because the flash and the lens are only a hair or two apart. Nikon boasts an in-camera red-eye fix, but it didn’t work all the time. Some digital cameras have red-eye fix features in the playback mode but Nikon’s works immediately after the image is taken and only if the camera detects the red-eye. It must not have detected it in all of my pictures.

Overall, the flash has a powerful range but only in spots. Realistically, the flash just doesn’t look good. It blows out subjects in the foreground and eliminates any details in the background. Picture this: bright, blown out and sweaty-looking subjects with black backgrounds. No thanks.

Zoom Lens (7.0)
The S500 has a 3x optical zoom lens. It is optically stabilized so that its elements are positioned to float and move when the camera is shaken, thereby compensating for shaking hands. The optical image stabilization system is one of the differences between the S500 and S200, and can be found on the S500 in the setup menu. The cheaper S200 has a less effective digital image stabilization system on a narrower 38-114mm lens. The Nikon Coolpix S500’s Zoom-Nikkor lens measures 5.7-17.1mm, equivalent to 35-105mm in the 35mm format. The 3x lens extends from the camera in three segments, which is different from other S-series models that have internal lenses. The S500’s lens has 5 elements in 5 groups and a two-step aperture that opens to f/2.8 when the lens is zoomed out and f/4.7 when zoomed in.

The lens is controlled by a skinny horizontal button in the upper right corner of the S500’s back. When pushed one way or another, a horizontal bar appears across the top of the screen that shows approximately where in the range it is. There is a line between "W" (wide) and "T" (telephoto) that separates the optical from the digital zoom. The camera offers 4x digital zoom, but it degrades the image quality quickly and isn’t recommended for use. So users won’t accidentally use it, the line is there and users have to push the "T" down again to jump the line. Once this is done, the bar turns yellow – maybe as a caution that image quality is going downhill? The optical zoom cannot be used in the movie mode and only 2x digital zoom is available.

The zoom control isn’t the most sensitive as it only stops at nine focal lengths. Zooming in is very smooth but zooming out will give you whiplash.

The lens doesn’t appear to be very high quality. When shooting a movie, I panned past a television screen and saw the screen’s reflection colored purple in two places around the frame. Overall, the lens isn’t a very high-quality component but they rarely are on such small cameras.