Nikon Coolpix S510

 
Manual Control Options
Like its predecessor, the Nikon Coolpix S510 has an all-purpose Shooting mode that allows for some control over white balance, ISO, flash, and focus area. There are no pure Manual, Program, or Aperture or Shutter Priority modes.

Focus
Autofocus (7.5)
The Nikon Coolpix S510 uses a 9-area contrast type autofocus system that generally works well. The camera focuses at a range of 1.7 feet to infinity, or as close as 5.9 inches to infinity when in Macro focus mode. Users can select from the following settings in Shooting mode, then through the AF Area mode menu: Auto, Center, Manual, and Face Priority.

The Auto mode automatically selects one of the nine areas, the Center mode defaults to the center point, the Manual mode allows users to select from one of 99 focus areas, and the Face Priority can reportedly detect up to 12 faces in a scene.

When the camera detects a face in Face Priority focus mode, yellow brackets appear on the screen that turn blue when focus is locked. The Face Priority function, however, is limited. Subjects are often not detected.

The automatic focus modes work well, but the Nikon face detection could use some work to catch up to competitors’ second- and third-generation face-finding technology.

Manual Focus (0.0)
The Nikon S510 does not have true manual focus.

ISO (7.75)
The Nikon Coolpix S510 has a range of ISO sensitivity settings. Users can select from the following manual ISO settings: 64, 100, 200, 400, 800, 1600, and the maximum ISO 2000. Auto ISO limits sensitivity to ISO 64 to 1000.

High ISO settings let more light into the camera for dark scenes, but at the sacrifice of image quality. Photos show visible noise, or grainy speckles that destroy picture quality, at the dedicated High ISO mode or any setting above ISO 400. In addition to high noise at high ISO settings, the camera introduces noise reduction technology that automatically smoothes over grain, which takes away detail from images and makes them look worse.

Buyers shouldn’t be dazzled by the high ISO range on the Nikon Coolpix S510. High sensitivity settings really aren’t helpful when images turn out grainy and without detail.

White Balance (7.0)
Users can set the white balance to Auto, Daylight, Incandescent, Fluorescent, Cloudy, or Flash. Some cameras include multiple fluorescent settings, but the S510 only has one. However, there is a manual setting called "Preset Manual." Preset Manual is a guided tool that allows users to set white balance with a white card. The LCD draws up a white bordered frame and prompts the user to "measure" or "cancel," while shooting a white area for accurate manual white balance.

Auto white balance is extremely effective outside or with flash, but performs worse when indoors under fluorescent and tungsten light. The other white balance presets perform accurately. See the Testing / Performance section of this review for more details.

Exposure (7.25)
Users can manually adjust exposure, but trying to figure out how is a process. The EV compensation icon is hidden on the border of the camera’s edge. Users can access exposure by hitting the multi-selector’s east directional.  

EV compensation can be adjusted on a vertical scale up to two whole steps in 1/3 increments. There is a helpful live preview with EV compensation, but no histogram information. That means users will have to estimate correct exposure based on what it looks like on the monitor, which may be problematic in outdoor settings or if the LCD display monitor brightness has been shifted.

Nikon's D-Lighting feature, located in Playback mode, is used to fix underexposed images.

Metering (5.5)
Nikon Coolpix S510 users unfortunately can't change Metering modes. Instead of the three types of Metering modes offered on many point-and-shoots (Matrix, Average, and Spot), the Coolpix S510 simply defaults to Multi-Pattern (or Matrix) metering, which uses 256 segments in concert with the autofocus.

Shutter Speed (0.0)
The mechanical and charge-coupled electronic shutter allows for a shutter speed of 1/1500 of a second to 4 seconds for long exposure, the same range offered on the earlier model. Users cannot manually change shutter speed. Instead, shutter speed can be adjusted by selecting the preset Scene modes.

When Nikon announced the Coolpix S510 in August, the manufacturer claimed a faster shutter response time of 15 milliseconds. That seems to be an an exaggeration, however, since we found the shutter-to-shot time to come in at 0.7 seconds.

Aperture (0.0)
Like its lack of manual shutter speed, there is no manual aperture control on the Coolpix S510. Aperture is set at a maximum of f/2.8 when zoomed out in wide angle and a maximum of f/4.7 when zoomed in during telephoto shooting.