Nikon Coolpix S51c

Manual Control Options
The Coolpix S51c isn’t built for manual control enthusiasts. It is made for consumers who want to conveniently take pictures on the fly without having to fuss about which shutter speed is appropriate for the current lighting situation. The S51c has automated modes and only a few manual controls, such as white balance and ISO.

Focus
Autofocus (5.0)
This is one of the most important areas in which a camera should perform well. The Nikon Coolpix S51c’s specs indicate it can focus from 1 foot (30 centimeters) to infinity normally and from 1.6 inches (4 centimeters) in the Macro focus mode. The normal focus mode’s specs are believable, as the contrast detection system seemed to work at that distance. The camera has trouble with macro subjects, though. It seems to achieve the proper focus, only to breathe out of focus before snapping the picture. The Macro focus mode is finicky and rarely produces focused results.

The focus area can be changed from the default 5-area Auto mode to Center or Manual. The Manual focus area mode allows you to scroll to 99 different points around the frame and choose one to focus on. This takes some of the guesswork out of the equation for the S51c, which doesn’t have a speedy system.

When the camera’s focus is locked, it takes it a tenth of a second to take a picture. That may not seem like much, but almost all digital cameras don’t have a measurable lag in this situation. This isn’t the fault of the autofocus system, but it only gets worse. When the camera is not prefocused and has a static subject in front of it, it takes the autofocus system and other processes 0.7 seconds to snap a picture. This is long enough that babies will stop smiling, grandparents will turn their heads, teens will start texting on their cell phones, and there will be plenty of blinked eyes along with the red eyes. Not pretty.

When the camera thinks the lighting is too low and its autofocus system needs some help (which is quite often), it shoots out an autofocus assist beam. The beam is bright orange and so piercing that several family members joked they were being wounded by a light saber (Star Wars fans abound).

Nikon digital cameras have included face priority autofocus technology for a few years, but only in 2007 did they upgrade the technology to reasonable standards. It is fast and up to par with other manufacturers in terms of speed, although it recognizes up to five faces when other manufacturers are detecting eight (Sony), 15 (Panasonic), and 35 (Canon). The big problem with the S51c’s face priority system is its accessibility. You have to remember to push the button on top of the camera. The feature isn’t automatically activated in the Portrait mode, like it is on most other digital cameras.

Overall, the autofocus system is slow and unreliable. It is very soft in the Movie mode, and not much better in most still images, even when shooting in perfect lighting.

Manual Focus (0.0)
There is no such feature on the Nikon Coolpix S51c.

ISO (7.25)
The Nikon Coolpix S51c has a fairly common ISO range, with an automatic setting that boosts up to ISO 800 and the following manual settings: 100, 200, 400, 800, and 1600. Most digital cameras have one more option below 100 – 50, 64, or 80 are the common choices – but the S51c opts to forgo those. This is an unfortunate move for consumers because of the ridiculous noise levels that occur all across the ISO sensitivity range. Even at ISO 100, noise is high. And it only goes up.

More details are available in the Testing/Performance section, but the Coolpix S51c’s images are speckled with noise and are smoothed over at ISO 800 and 1600. The dynamic range, or range of tones that can be captured at once, is acceptable at ISO 100 but drops off after that. Don’t get excited about the 100-1600 ISO range, because the higher sensitivities ruin the image quality.

White Balance (7.0)
The camera’s white balance settings are tucked into the Shooting menu, where they show up with a live preview for a background. The preview makes choosing a setting easier because you can see the effects of each option immediately. There is an automatic white balance setting that performs similarly to daylight, incandescent, fluorescent, cloudy, and flash settings. Usually, we recommend the auto over the presets or vice versa, but nothing performed particularly well. More on that in the Testing/Performance section. The saving grace is the presence of the Manual white balance, which is easy to set and allows users to capture much more accurate colors.

Exposure (7.25)
The shutter speed and aperture cannot be manually selected, but the exposure compensation can be adjusted – if you can find it. It is located on the right side of the rotary dial, but the icon that indicates its presence is wrapped around to the right side where no one can see it from the back.

The exposure compensation has the typical +/- 2 range in steps of a third and can be adjusted on a scale with a large live preview. Images are often slightly overexposed when the exposure is left up to the camera.

There is a D-lighting feature in the Playback mode that acts as an automatic exposure fix, but it works better on dark images than on overexposed images. It can fix contrast problems in overexposed images, but it can’t retrieve information that isn’t there.

Metering (5.5)
The S51c doesn’t have a metering choice in its Shooting menu; the exposure metering is all dependent upon a center-weighted 224-segment matrix system. This is a big problem with this camera, and causes many outdoor images to look overexposed. There is a Backlight scene mode that uses spot metering and does a little better of a job in that area, but other options like the white balance and ISO can’t be accessed.

Shutter Speed (0.0)
The Nikon Coolpix S51c has a shutter speed range that stays within 1-1/2000 of a second, except in the Fireworks scene mode, where it slows to 4 seconds. This is typical of a compact digital camera. The S51c is equipped with a mechanical and charge-coupled electronic shutter that flips after the shutter release button is pushed to capture the shot. Unfortunately, there is a little lag time; see the Testing/Performance section.

Aperture (0.0)
The Zoom-Nikkor 3x optical zoom lens has an f/3.3 max aperture that isn’t exceptionally wide but is typical of tiny internal lenses. The Sony G1’s internal lens opens to an even smaller f/3.5, as does the 3x internal lens on the Olympus 790SW. The Casio V8’s 7x optical zoom lens opens to f/3.4. The Nikon S51c’s f/3.3 max comes when zoomed out; the max shrinks to f/4.2 when zoomed in. The smallest the aperture can go is f/6.6. Many extending lenses have wider apertures, though. The Panasonic TZ3’s 10x optical zoom lens opens to f/2.8.