Get the latest Digital Camera news and reviews

Thank you for subscribing!

Nikon Coolpix S6300 Digital Camera Review

$199.95
By Ben Keough November 14, 2012
7.1
Better than 49% of Reviewed Digital Cameras
http://reviewed-production.s3.amazonaws.com/attachment/44c23c78f6bb4aca5e60003e06883663558c729c/s940x110_Nikon-Coolpix-S6300-940x400.jpg

Controls

Shooting Modes

The S6300 doesn't really offer much in the way of shooting modes beyond the standard Automatic mode. There are a variety of scene modes and art filters (Nikon calls them "Special effects"), and there's also a "Smart portrait" mode that automatically takes a shot whenever the camera detects a smiling face. In this last mode, you can also set the camera to use the skin-smoothing feature by default. Finally, there's a subject tracking mode that attempts to keep your target in focus as you follow them around. In theory, this mode should be great for shooting pets, sports, and other fast-moving subject (airplanes?), but in our testing we found that the software got confused pretty easily.

Focus

Focus is good in bright light—not the fastest we've seen, even in this class, but good enough—though in low light it becomes quite unreliable. Not only will it frequently fail to find focus (producing a red focus box on the screen), it will also often claim to have found focus when it clearly hasn't. Both failures are troubling, but the latter is a real disappointment.

Recording Options

There are a total of seven quality and size options available on the S6300. Two of these are different compression options at the maximum 16-megapixel size. Several more are reduced-res, high-compression versions of the same aspect ratio: 8, 4, and 2 megapixels, as well as VGA (640x480px). The last is a large 16:9 widescreen format, though it is still highly compressed.

9714f09447eba36d48866d15ee9c62a0?s=48&d=mm
Ben is an experienced industry journalist, now covering cameras and camcorders for Reviewed.com. Most recently hailing from the vast wilds of the American southwest, he is an avid photographer who is deeply disturbed by the lack of wide open landscapes in Boston.
Advertisement

Latest News & Reviews

Top Rated Digital Cameras

1
 $5,999.95
2
 $6,800.00
3
 $1,299.00
Advertisement
See More

Latest Deals