Nikon COOLPIX S6200 Review

The market is overflowing with hordes of point and shoot cameras. With the increasing number of cameras, it isn't an easy task to distinguish and pick the right one, given that every new addition emerges with slight tweaks, here and there. Augmenting the list, Nikon brought in the new S6200 along with the S6150 in August, this year. The compact camera caters to the budget market, just like its predecessor S6100. The S8150 features almost similar characteristics as the S6100, except for its touchscreen abilities. On the other hand, the S6200 has been ‘considerably’ improved. The highlight of the device is its wide 10x zoom, along with improved attributes like battery life and more internal memory.

Nikon COOLPIX S6200 front

Design and Build quality
The S6200 is a compact camera with similar design elements as the S6150. Although it weighs lesser than both S6100 and S6150, at 160 grams it looks slightly bulky, compared to the sleek cameras that enter the market these days. It is available in vivid colors - blue, pink, white, silver, red and black. We received the blue variant, which wasn't eye appealing to many. The metallic blue look drapes the entire front and edges of the body and the rear portion is black. In fact, at the first glance, the display portion looked, so distinct that one could mistake it for a display that swivels.

Nikon COOLPIX S6200 rear

It embeds a 2.7-inch display on the right, while the left side embeds a five-way navigation wheel, scene button, playback button, recording button, menu and delete buttons. On the lower side, you’ll find a tripod mount and compartments for the USB/AV out connections, battery and memory card. The front has the flash and AF assist. The main shutter release button is surrounded by a zoom ring, stereo and power buttons on the top edge. Overall, the build quality is sturdy; the compartment flaps can be easily pushed back into place. The plastic buttons are firmly placed with a dedicated area to place your thumb.

Features
The camera equips a 16 megapixel sensor with 10x optical zoom with image stabilization present on the camera. Nikon claims that their EXPEED C2 image processing engine should help users click good photos at high sensitivity sensor settings. Nikons says that their noise reduction feature offers good performance, even at ISO 1600 (using automatic ISO sensitivity adjustment) and ISO 3200 (with manual ISO sensitivity). The user interface is simple and it doesn’t take much time to get the hang of it. The look of the user interface is similar to that found on some of Nikon’s DSLRs, however the ones on this don’t feel as refined. It is a little sluggish as well.

The main menu button takes you directly to the shooting menu. Press the Scene button, and you get 19 scene presets to choose from. The subject tracking feature works, rather well once you lock the target. The ISO sensitivity range start at 80 and go up to 3200. It comes with hand held/tripod night landscape detection function. During hand held shooting, it increases the ISO sensitivity and shutter speed to reduce blur while night shots. On tripod, it automatically decreases ISO settings and shutter for brighter nighttime shots and less noise as possible. This is one of the unique features that we’ve seen on a point and shoot cameras. A set of special effects include Soft, High key, Low key, Nostalgic sepia, High-contrast monochrome and Selective color options, while filter effects, include - Cross screen, Fisheye, Miniature effect, Painting, Soft and Selective. It also supports shooting videos at 720p at a good 30fps. A minute of video takes about 42 MB of space on the memory card. Videos are recorded in the MOV format.