Nikon Coolpix S1000pj

Tools for sharing photos and videos are increasingly being seen in digital cameras these days. Features such as image enhancement and slideshow with background music and transition effect are common. Some cameras also offer selectable music tracks to go with the mood of your photos. Nikon has gone a few steps further and packed a projector in their latest addition to the Coolpix lineup, the S1000pj.

Features
Despite a projector squeezed in the S1000pj it sports a compact design and weighs in at just 155 grams like any other compact digital camera — it’s neither too large nor is it too heavy. The all-black shell with matte finish lends a good look to the device. Nikon has done a great job with the design considering the slew of features that they have thrown in, right from the optics to the navigation controls.

The S1000pj is equipped with a 12.1 MP sensor and a 5x zoom lens that resides in the body. At 28 mm it’s nice and wide for capturing wide landscapes and big groups of people. And with 5x optical zoom it’s a notch above many compact cameras that offer 3x or 4x zoom lens. Our concern with the optics is a relatively smaller aperture (F3.9) at 28 mm which is possibly due to the design of the in-body lens—we have seen aperture as large as F2.8 in compact cameras. It won’t make a difference in broad daylight, but with a larger aperture you get better exposure in low lighting and shallower depth of field.

The projector window is at the center of the face below the flash. There’s a switch on the top for switching to the projector and a slider for adjusting the projector’s focus. The zoom lever encircling the shutter release button is at the right end next to the on/off button.

The rear panel is clean with a large 2.7-inch LCD and a tiny control panel at the bottom right corner. The control panel layout is pretty standard with a 5-way d-pad and buttons for menu, delete, playback mode and scene selection. We liked the one-touch access to flash settings, self timer, macro mode and exposure compensation via the d-pad—a very useful combination. But the addition of a programmable hotkey or a button for adjusting the ISO would have been nice.

The area above the control panel is slightly depressed and has dimples for a firm grip. To the left of the grip are an IR sensor, flash charging indicator and a tiny speaker grille. There’s another IR sensor right next to the lens. The camera bundles with a tiny little remote control that serves two purposes. Firstly you can control the slideshow with the d-pad and secondly it’s a wireless shutter release with zoom controls. So no need of scurrying into the frame before the timer runs out if you want to be in the picture. And with two IR sensors it doesn’t matter whether you’re in front of or behind the camera.