Nikon Coolpix S630

Shooting Modes (10.00)

The shooting modes on the Coolpix S630 are mostly run-of-the-mill, though they are arranged oddly. The Mode menu is divided into four tabs: Auto, which gives you the most amount of control; Scene, with 17 scene modes; Other modes, which has sport continuous, high ISO and smile detection; and finally Movie mode. What’s missing are the manual exposure control, aperture-priority and shutter-priority modes that more advanced photographers look for, even in a compact camera.

There aren’t many interesting shooting modes on the S630. There’s a panorama assist, which overlays the previous image on-screen to help line up consecutive shots, but can’t stitch together photos in-camera. Smile detector only shoots when it sees a grin. Sport continuous lowers the resolution, but can take up to 11 frames per second. High ISO boosts the ISO to a maximum of 3200, but at 3-megapixel resolution.

There is no separate Easy or completely automatic mode.

Auto Mode Features

The autofocus system can be set to face priority, auto, center and manual. ‘Manual’ doesn’t mean manual focus in the traditional sense, though; it lets you move the autofocus reticule around the LCD using the four-way pad.

In bright light, the focus was plenty quick, but the S630 has a lot of trouble focusing in dark situations. The autofocus assist lamp does little to help in poor illumination, and the camera failed to properly focus more often than not.

The focusing motor is quite loud, and makes a vaguely disconcerting grinding noise when trying to find the focus point.

The exposure compensation range is ±2EV in 1/3 step increments. There is no bracketing capability.

Metering can be set to matrix (evaluative) or center-weighted. While using the latter, the region of the frame used for metering is marked on the LCD, a useful feature.

The aperture range is on the pedestrian side. It runs f/3.5-f/10 at wide angle, and f/5.3-f/14 at telephoto. This isn’t fantastically fast, but it’s acceptable for a camera in this class. Unfortunately there is no aperture mode available for making manual adjustments.

During the course of normal photography, the maximum shutter speed is two seconds, and the minimum is 1/1500 of a second. In Fireworks mode, the maximum is boosted to four seconds, and in reduced resolution Sport Continuous mode, the minimum is shifted to 1/4000 second. As with aperture, however, there’s no manual option, so you’re stuck with what the camera thinks is best.

In face detection mode, there’s an additional smile detection setting, which will automatically take a photograph when it notices a grin. This can also be paired with blink detection, which will take a second photo directly after the first, if the camera thinks the subject had closed eyes.

In addition to the usual 2 and 10 second timers, the Nikon S630 also has an interval timer shooting setting. This can be set to take photos every 30 seconds, 1, 5 or 10 minutes.

Picture Effects (1.50)

Picture effects are called Color Options by Nikon. There’s Standard color and Vivid color, which are discussed in greater detail in the Color section of this review. There’s also Black and White, Sepia, Cyanotype and Pastel.

Manual Controls (5.63)

In addition to the automatic white balance system there are white balance presets for daylight, incandescent, fluorescent, cloudy and flash. You can also take a manual white balance reading, a capability often lacking in point and shoot cameras.

Drive/Burst Mode (7.00)

There are a number of continuous shutter modes on the S630. There’s the standard Continuous, Best Shot Selector and Multi-shot 16. Continuous keeps taking photographs as long as the shutter is held down, though at a rather slow pace. Best shot selector takes 10 images in quick succession, and saves the one it thinks is the sharpest. Multi-shot 16 takes 16 images in seven seconds, and combines them all in a grid on a single image.

Shot to Shot (0.39)

In continuous mode, at the highest image quality setting, the S630 managed a sluggish 0.4 frames per second. The first two shots were fired much faster, but after that it slowed down considerably.