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Introduction
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01.Physical Tour
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02.Components
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03.Design / Layout
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04.Modes
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05.Control Options
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06.Conclusion
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07.Specs
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08.Comments
Nikon Coolpix S60
Previous: Page 4
ModesNext: Page 6
ConclusionManual Control Options
The manual control options on the S60 are almost non-existent. While you can at least set white balance and exposure compensation, there is no way to directly control shutter speed or aperture. There is no manual focus option either.
Focus
Auto Focus
The auto focus seemed to be fast and accurate in our brief period with the camera, with plenty of cool little features. The auto focus can be set to center, face priority or manual. In manual mode, you just tap a point on the screen, and the camera will focus on that spot. Face detection can work with up to 12 faces, and can be set for blink warning and smile shutter. The first warns you when your subject has their eyes shut so you don't take the picture, and the latter can be set to record an image when they smile.
ISO
The S60 has an ISO range of 64 - 3200, a surpisingly expansive range, plus auto (ISO 64-800) and High ISO sensitivity auto (ISO 64-1600). This is an impressive range for a point-and-shoot camera. Unfortunately, at this stage, we can not give any indication of how noisy the images are at the higher ISOs.
White Balance
The Coolpix S60 has white balance presets for daylight, incandescent, fluorescent, cloudy and flash. There's auto mode and Preset Manual, the latter of which is another name for manual white balance. It is pleasant to see a camera that is otherwise so oriented to removing as much control as possible actually offers a custom white balance option.
Metering
The metering mode cannot be controlled. It is center weighted when the digital zoom is less than 2x, and spot when the digital zoom is more than 2x.
Shutter Speed
The S60 has no way of manually controlling the shutter speed. It can run from 1/1500 second to 4 seconds, the latter only in fireworks mode.
Aperture
There is no way to set the aperture on the S60. The camera only offers two steps, f/3.8 and f/6.4 wide.
Image Stabilization
The camera uses an optical image stabilization system called Vibration Reduction. While we did not get a chance to test it, according to Nikon it can tell when you are panning the camera horizontally, in which case it will only compensate for vertical movements, and vice versa.
Picture Quality / Size Options
The Nikon Coolpix S60 can shoot at 4:3, 3:2 and 16:9 formats, with sizes ranging from 3,648 x 2,736 to 1,024 x 768, and are resizable down to 160 x 120 editing mode.
Picture Effects Mode
The picture effects for the S60 all appear in playback mode. There are color options, which change the image to vivid, black and white, sepia or cyanotype, and paint mode, which lets you scribble all over your picture. You can also morph your images to a certain extent using the stretch and perspective tools. This is a much shorter list than we see on some other point-and-shoots, which is a bad thing if you like your images to come out looking like they've been thrown through twelve Photoshop filters, but just fine otherwise.
Shop for the Nikon Coolpix S60
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