Nikon Coolpix S3100

Not all of us are looking for a camera with which to make competition standard prints; sometimes all we want to do is point and shoot and end up with an attractive result that doesn't require much, if any, image editing. And if we can get that for a reasonable price, all the better. Ticking those boxes is the new Coolpix S3100, which offers an effective resolution of 14 megapixels and a 5x zoom lens.
Available in a range of seven vivid colours - citrus yellow, pink, purple, blue and regulation silver and black – the cheerful label can be applied to this camera even before you've taken a photo, assuming any of the above colours takes your fancy. The S3100 inevitably also boasts slender proportions and manageable weight of just 118g with battery and card, so it will slot equally well into any handbag or trouser pocket.
For the cheap part of the equation, prices of between £115 and £130 seem to fit the bill. Inevitably, at this price you're looking at a camera with no few manual controls, so if you start to get a bit ambitious with your shooting you may soon out grow it.
There are some interesting stats that come with the S3100. It upgrades last year's 12 megapixel S3000, which Nikon claims was, incredibly (considering its mediocrity), Europe's best selling camera for 2010. This immediately lends the S3100 a place of importance within the manufacturer's line up that belies its gaudy/glossy exterior and high volume/low cost market position.

 Reminding us a lot of last year's great value and similarly dinky S5100 model, the new Nikon S3100 is one of a co-announced Coolpix trio which includes the touch screen S4100 and 7x zoom S6100. This unit's own 5x optical zoom, the equivalent of a wider than most 26-130mm in 35mm film terms, is an improvement over the S3000's 4x, and is shoehorned into its slim-line, 18.4mm, body (also an improvement over its predecessor's 19mm frame). Inevitably, the lens aperture is a modest f/3.3-6.5 so low light shooting will more often than not require a flash or very steady hands and subjects. Unfortunately there's no sensor shift nor optical stabilisation mechanism to help out in the latter scenarios or when shooting handheld at the telephoto end of the zoom.
More positively, the S3100's 2.7-inch, 230k dot resolution LCD screen is claimed to be brighter than its forebear's despite being identically sized, which we found was borne out in testing.

HD video recording is a thoroughly unsurprising addition in this day and age, though here's it's of the HD ready, 1,280x720, variety. You even get a dedicated record button located at the top right hand corner of the backplate, which is a rare addition on lower priced cameras. Press this and recording instantly commences, the screen's default 4:3 aspect ratio cropped to the widescreen 16:9 in which hthe footage is being recorded. There's no HDMI output however, just standard definition AV output and USB 2.0 connectivity, sharing a port at the camera's base, next to the shared compartment for the supplied rechargeable lithium ion battery and optional SD, SDHC or SDXC media card. Incidentally, the battery is charged within the camera, as Nikon, doubtless to keep costs down, has supplied a generic USB mains adapter into which one end of the supplied USB cable neatly slots.
Despite being a mere slip of a thing, Nikon is pitching the S3100 as a camera that has both style and substance. With a metallic finish faceplate and matt black plastic back plate, the S3100 both looks attractive whilst feeling surprisingly sturdy when gripped in the palm. Inevitably at this entry level end of the market, there's nothing resembling a handgrip at all to be found at the front of the camera, so your fingers slip and slide around its faceplate, six raised plastic nodules at the rear providing the only point of purchase for the thumb.

This means that the camera is difficult to hold rock steady and level when shooting handheld, and even in broad daylight this resulted in us getting some blurred results when shooting at the telephoto end of the zoom, due to camera shake. Nikon offers software based electronic stabilisation (Or as Nikon terms it 'Vibration Reduction') which boosts ISO and shutter speed to try and compensate; but in fact it falls short as well as reducing image quality. A wrist strap can be attached via a lug on the camera's right hand side (if viewed from the back) so you don't actually drop it.

So while there are a few desirable features missing, some useful point-and-shoot additions are available. Smile Timer, Blink Proof, in-camera red eye fix and Skin Softening all help you to more easily take group photos and keep portraits looking their best. Again, though, it's worth noting that if none of these automatic settings can get the job done there are no manual options to fall back on – a typical situation for budget compacts but annoying nonetheless.

That said there is the option for a degree of creativity with its colour modes, which range from the default setting of standard, through the alternatives of vivid, black and white, sepia or cyanotype.
There's no obvious dedicated shooting mode button or dial here, as fully automatic image capture is by default the main setting. Thus you can turn the camera on and, provided date and time have been pre-set, be up and shooting near instantly. However we do get a dedicated 'scene' mode button which lets you instead drill in to a collection of 19 pre-optimised options, covering the usual selection of portrait, both human and animal, and landscape biased snapping. Even among these there is a 'smart' option, letting the user rely on the camera to decide which of the scene modes it deems most appropriate for any given scene or subject.

Via a left hand toolbar that pops up alongside, users can furthermore drill into the aforementioned Smart Portrait system options or, unusually for a camera in this price bracket, tab further down and activate subject tracking to maintain focus on moving subjects. Again, the impression given by the S3100 is that if offers rather more than one might expect from a humble pocket snapshot.