The Coolpix S60 is a stylish new addition to the wide-ranging Nikon lineup. It boasts a handsome 3.5-inch touch screen LCD and a surprising lack of buttons and switches: the screen is the only method of input, However, this seems to be a case of form over function, as the screen's response time is mediocre, the manual controls minimal, and parts of the camera shoddily constructed. The Nikon Coolpix S60 ships in September for $349.99
Auto Mode The Nikon S60 is constantly in auto mode. There is no way to adjust aperture or shutter speed. However, considering that it is so automatic, it handles shooting pretty well. It seemed to focus quickly and accurately. Of course, the real test of an auto mode is how well it handles adverse conditions, not a well lit hall. We'll have to wait to get our hands on a final unit efore we can comment further.
Movie Mode The Coolpix S60 can shoot video at 640 x 480 (30 fps) or 320 x 280 (30 or 15 fps). It also has a time lapse feature, which can be set to take a frame at set intervals from 30 seconds to 60 minutes, which are then recorded at 640 x 480 (30 fps).
Drive / Burst Mode In continuous shooting, the camera can take up to 7 photos at 1.2 frames per second. There's also a Best Shot Selector mode, which takes 10 images in a row (at an unspecified speed) and chooses the sharpest one to keep. It seems this would be good for shooting in low light situations, assuming the algorithm is effective enough to tell which image is the sharpest. Multi-shot 16 takes 16 shots at 1.5 frames per second which are then arranged in a grid on a single 5-megapixel image. Finally, there's Interval Timer Shooting, which will take up to 1800 frames at intervals of 30 seconds to 60 minutes.
Playback Mode During Playback Mode, images can be displayed as thumbnails in a grid of four, nine, 16 or 25 pictures. Alternatively, images can be zoomed in up to 10x, and navigated around by dragging a finger across the screen. The files can be sorted by favorite, shooting mode or date. The editing controls are decidedly mixed. You can trim/crop the image, stretch portions of it and alter perspective. The Color Options setting lets you change the color settings of the image to vivid, black and white, sepia or cyanotype (cyan-blue monotone).There's a paint mode that lets you draw or write over your image using very basic paint tools: pen, stamps and borders. There's a D-lighting tool to help with pictures that have both extremely light and dark areas, and slideshows can be presented on TVs at both standard resolution and HD.
Custom Image Presets There are 19 different scene modes: Scene auto selector, Portrait, Landscape, Sports, Night portrait, Party/indoor, Beach/snow, Sunset, Dusk/dawn, Night landscape, Close-up, Food, Museum, Fireworks show, Copy, Draw, Backlight, Panorama assist and Voice recording. Draw mode just gives you a blank area to play with the drawing tools.
