A Small, Powerful Superzoom Digital Camera

If you are looking for a great compact camera on zoom, 12.1-megapixel Nikon Coolpix S9100 has you covered-it packs whopping 18x optical zoom into a pocket-sized body. Does not have some features of its competitors', such as UI striking, or GPS, but if you want to be closer to the action, S9100 which provides an important place. The camera is very fast, packs a high res LCD, and captures images and videos that are very good even in low light, so that the Editor's Choice superzoom our latest 'digital camera.

Design
S9100 that wants to be taken seriously, and chose to look professional on the attributes attract attention or colorful. It comes in black, red, or black silver my test unit. Qualify as a pocket-sized, but just barely at 2.5 by 4.2 by 1.4 inches (HWD). The right front has a small grip is basically just a vertical bar that looks like a stylish design but are intended to provide a better hold. As the camera higher-end phones, flash S9100's have to manually emerge that will be used. The back of the camera has a sweet little ring spinning on it so you can quickly breeze through the menus. The layout of the buttons do not deviate from what you see on most compact cameras, no pad underneath the scroll wheel, dedicated Playback and Movie Recording button, and the mode dial and zoom trigger.

You'd be hard pressed to find a camera the size of S9100 which can offer more zoom. Last year we reviewed some of the best superzoom compact camera, and Canon PowerShot SX210 IS offers the best lens specifications: the range of its 14x optical zoom lens 28-392mm (35mm equivalent). S9100 pulsing at both ends with 18x optical zoom lens that covers 25-450mm. With this camera, you get the best from the world's second-lens wide-angle and telephoto lens impressive. Like most competitors, the appropriate aperture range of f/3.5-f/5.9.
3-inch LCD on the back of the camera is one of the best in the market.

Most compact cameras fill their screen with 230,000 dot, and some rose sharply to 460,000. S9100 is tight in the box with 921 000 points, and the result is the LCD which looks like it belongs on the D-SLR camera, the images look bright and colorful, and text is razor sharp and readable.

The user interface is the same as every other Nikon compact camera we have seen in recent years-easy, but text-based and boring. Do not expect the graphics are colorful, the menu quickly, or descriptions of fashion. However, high resolution LCD boring does not make the UI look more attractive and easier to navigate than many low-res LCD.

S9100 is generally easy to operate. There is a fully automatic shooting and scene modes for most shooting situations. There is also a special mode for panorama photo-swipe left to right camera only, and will combine several photos into one panoramic shot master. You can manually control the ISO sensitivity, white balance, focus area, and more, but unfortunately, as is common with compact cameras, there is no way to control the shutter speed or aperture.

Unlike some of its competitors superzoom, S9100 does not contain GPS. Although this is not really a knock, it is important to note that if you are looking for a versatile travel camera there are several options superzoom out there that add GPS for geotagging photos, like the Canon PowerShot SX230 HS, Sony Cyber-shot HXV5 or Panasonic Lumix DMC-ZS7.

Performance
S9100 is an absolute speed demon. Power the camera and shoots at an average of 1.56 seconds. When turned on, it averaged only 0.50 seconds shutter lag, and just wait for 1.58 seconds between shots. For comparison, the Sony Cyber-shot HX5V pales: the power and shoots in 2.33 seconds narrow, matched with S9100 on shutter lag, but up later to 1.80 seconds between shots.

In the PC Mag labs we use Imatest to objectively evaluate the picture quality, and the result of S9100 is solid across the board. In terms of sharpness, S9100 offered a weighted average center-1767 lines per picture height, is almost identical with HX5V Sony, which offers center weighted average of 1796. Both are spectacular numbers, but it's a good result for a compact camera.

camera image sensors offer low-light performance is good. If you want to shoot in poor lighting conditions without using the flash, you need to jack up the ISO sensitivity to absorb more light. But the higher you go, the more you inject noise into your images. If it detects an Imatest more than 1.5 percent on the image noise, it is likely to look rough or noisy. The HXV5 Sony able to keep the sound below 1.5 percent up to and including ISO 1600, which is quite good, but the S9100 comes out all the way up to ISO 3200 before becoming a produce images look noisy. S9100 will serve you well in a less than optimal lighting conditions.

You have many options for recording high-definition video with 1080-S9100 at 30 frames per second and 720 at 30 and 60 fps. (60 frames per second is very rare, in anything other than special camcorder.) You even have the option to make low-resolution (320 x 240) video slow motion, capturing 240 frames per second. Video captured as. MOV files that can be uploaded to YouTube and so easy.

S9100 allows you to use a giant zoom while recording video, but when sliding in and out you will catch the subtle voice of the lens motor. It also can autofocus while recording, and in my tests, I did not hear any sound when it did. There are audio built-in stereo microphone, thus capturing the sound is too big. You can play back video on your HDTV with a connecting cable to the S9100's built-in mini-HDMI port. Files can be transferred to your computer via the USB port of the camera. The camera writes to SD, SDHC, and memory cards SDXC.

Nikon Coolpix S9100 is a top-notch choice for compact superzoom camera. Shooter offers one of the lens optical zoom biggest you can find in a compact camera, along with the picture quality is very good, nice choice of video capture, and LCD exceptional with reasonable price. Although extra-in GPS would be a good built, S9100 is still easy to obtain.