Nikon Coolpix S610c

Noise
The speckling that you see across large areas of flat color on an image, especially at high ISOs, is what's known as image noise. On a camera that doesn't deal with noise very well, it can seriously mar the quality of your photos. We test noise levels at every available full-resolution ISO as well as on automatic ISO mode to see just how well the camera deals with this potential pitfall.

Noise – Manual ISO (12.00)
You can see in the chart below that the noise levels increase very gradually from ISO 100 to ISO 400, then dip slightly (most likely due to some degree of noise reduction processing) before popping up just a little at ISO 1600. The noise levels hover around 1.2% even at this high level, and only bumps up to 1.9% at ISO 3200.

As you can see below, the S610c did very well, keeping noise levels at entirely acceptable levels throughout the test.

Auto Noise (2.43)
The second half of our noise test involves shooting on auto ISO setting, which lets the camera decide for itself what's the best ISO for current lighting conditions.In this case, the Nikon chose ISO 400, which is on the high side for our well illuminated chart. The only reason the camera didn't score more poorly here is its generally first-rate noise performance..

Low Light (5.47)
While you're most likely to get beautiful shots under good sunlight, lighting situations aren't always that great, and you will undoubtedly have to (or want to) shoot under dim lights or at night time. We, of course, test the cameras under these darker conditions so you can see how well the camera shoots, especially with regards to color accuracy and noise levels.

The first test in this section involved taking photographs of the ever-popular GretagMacbeth color chart under 60 lux (a well illuminated room during nighttime) down to 5 lux (a single candle in a dark room). The S610c did very well in this section, and kept noise levels at about 1.6% or below, with very good color accuracy. It overexposed at 5 lux, but apart from that, it showed itself very competent for shooting in low-light situations.

The second half of this test ideally involves shooting exposure lengths from 1-second to 30-seconds at 30 lux, but the S610c has a maximum exposure length of just 1 second, so we could only shoot for that length of time. The resulting image was unsurprising for the exposure length, slightly under-saturated, but with low noise levels.

Nikon Coolpix S610c Low Light Scores

As you can see in the above graph, the S610c did well, if not amazingly, under low-light conditions.

Still Life
To demonstrate the effect of  shooting under different ISOs, we've photographed two still life scenes using every full-resolution ISO, under fluorescent illumination, using the camera's auto exposure system. You can see the results below, and click on these thumbnails to see the full-size version (be aware, though, that these are large images and can take a long time to load).

ISO 100
ISO 200
ISO 400
ISO 800
ISO 1600
ISO 3200

Video Performance (4.77)
One of the great features of point-and-shoot cameras is their ability to record video as well as stills. While they might not be able to replace your trusty camcorder, they certainly are handy in a pinch. We test for image quality in video recording much the same way we do with still photography, by recording color and resolution charts and analyzing them with Imatest. We do this by extracting frames from the video files for analysis. 

Low Light - 30 Lux
Under our dimmer 30 lux setup the Nikon performed marginally better, providing results on par with most other cameras we've seen, which is to say a bit under-saturated, but adequate color accuracy.

Resolution (1.53)

The video resolution of the S610c was pretty good. It shot 414 lw/ph (line widths per pixel height) vertically and 369 lw/ph horizontally. This isn't bad for this type of camera, and is slightly above average for most point-and-shoot cameras on the market.

Motion (1.50)

To get a better idea of how the video mode handles quickly moving objects, we braved the winter cold to shoot moving cars on the streets of Boston. Once again, a slightly above average result from this Nikon, as it managed to keep up with objects in motion with minimal blurring.

Nikon Coolpix S610c Video Scores