Introduction

Ease of Use

Sliding effortlessly into the Style range of cameras like an Alligator sliding into a river (though arguably not as dangerous) is the Nikon Coolpix S2800. It's a slim point and shoot camera with a range of features designed to get the best possible results from as many photographic situations as possible. On the front is a modest 5x optical zoom which starts at a wide-angle setting of 26mm in 35mm terms. That should get a decent vista in shot, but should you require a wider scene, the S2800 has a Panoramic mode in the Scene menu. Sitting just to the side of the lens is a small flash unit which has a distance of 13ft (4m) in ISO auto.

Nikon have tried to shrink buttons and switches in order to preserve space and get the camera as small and slim as possible. It's only 19.8mm deep which is great for portability as it simply slides into a pocket or bag. The camera is powered on using the small button on top of the camera that has a small green ring around it. This lights up when the camera is on so you know it's powered up. The shutter release sits to the right and by comparison is considerably larger, though is still considered small. The zoom switch wraps around the shutter release for operating the aforementioned zoom.

Front	Rear

On the back, the screen occupies the left side of the camera and at 2.7 inches is on the smaller side by today's standards. Still, this is a sub £100 camera and that has to be remembered when looking at specifications. The operation buttons are to the right of the camera as per almost any other digital camera in existence. It's a case of if it isn't broken, then don't fix it because the layout of the S2800 is typical of digital compact cameras. The green camera button gives access to the modes available on the S2800. There are five sub-menus available which is one extra to what you'd find if you went for a similarly priced model in the L (Lifestyle) range of Nikon Coolpix.

You can choose the Auto Scene mode which will automatically select the mode for the camera to be in depending on what the camera sees in the frame. Below that is the manual Scene menu with 18 options. A couple of those options also house variations of those scenes, such as Night landscape which offers Hand-held or Tripod based shooting. Below this is the Digital effects menu, which is the additional feature we mentioned. You can add interesting and currently trending filters to the pictures you take such as Painting, Pop art, Toy camera and several Cross process modes. Should you take the picture and then decide you want to add a filter after, you can do this in the revision stage of taking the picture. Just press ok when it says on the screen or when you're in Playback, it's the same process.

The Main menu is accessed via the Menu button at the bottom of the camera. It's split into three sections for Shooting options, Video and Set up. The Shooting section is designated with a camera icon and allows you to change the resolution, white-balance, ISO or focus options. The video menu allows you to adjust the film quality, focus modes and wind noise reduction. The Set up menu is the intensive menu that changes core features of the camera such as the time & date, monitor settings, sound settings, power down timer and card format options.

Front	Top

Starting the camera up from the off position takes a little under three seconds to power up, focus and take a picture. That's slow by today's standards. Cameras recently decreased their times from around the 2.5 sec mark to just under 2 sec. For a modern camera to take nearly 3 sec to do the same job isn't very inspiring. The Nikon S2800 does have a continuous shooting mode. In the first second it takes two pictures but then slows down to one every 1.5 sec or so. That's not a precise figure, but we got 9 frames in a ten second period, which averages out at around 0.9fps (frames per second).

Playback can be operated on the S2800 regardless of whether the camera is switched on or not. If it's not, you simply have to hold down the playback button (designated by a blue arrow) for a few seconds. The image will be brought up full size on the screen with some basic shooting information that will disappear after a few seconds. If you took a photo and decided after that you wanted to add the digital filters, you still can by pressing the Ok button. It will transport you into the Digital Filter menu system. There are 32 to choose from although the bulk of the options available are duplicates of the same options. You can also press the Playback button once you're already in Playback and bring up a kind of Mode menu. It allows you to select how to view the photographs. There are four options: Play (default), Favourites, Auto Sort and List by Date.

Memory Card Slot	Battery Compartment

In the Main menu, the Shooting and Video tabs that are present when in Recording mode have been replaced with one Playback tab. The Set-up tab remains and retains all the same features. The Playback tab allows you to modify and edit the picture you're currently looking at in a variety of different ways, such as a Quick retouch, adding D-Lighting, Red-eye correction and Glamour retouch as well as other features such as determining the print order, creating a slide-show and protecting precious images.

Upon opening the box, you'll find a Quick Start Guide which is looks big, but is in several languages. The full Manual is on the enclosed CD which also features ViewNX 2, a simple editing system from Nikon. Below this is the camera and lithium ion battery. Because the battery is rechargeable, the camera comes with a charging unit which is capable of being used in multiple countries by attaching or removing the UK three pin adapter. A USB cable plugs into the charging unit and then to the camera. There's also a wrist strap to prevent dropping the camera.

Image Quality

All of the sample images in this review were taken using the 20 megapixel Fine JPEG setting, which gives an average image size of around 7Mb.

Noise

The sensitivity range of the Nikon Coolpix S2800 is ISO 80 – 3200. Looking at the pictures from a normal viewing distance, they look good through until the end with a reasonable amount of detail in each picture to see what's going on. There is a little too much blue noise at ISO 1600 in the darker areas, but that gets dealt with at later stages. The trick is to look at the pictures at full magnification to see exactly where and when the noise starts to interfere with the picture quality.

At ISO 80, image quality is great with sharp edges, but colour rendition and while there's a little noise in the darker areas, it's not enough to gripe about even though it's at ISO 80. The noise that we see at ISO 80 stays at that level until ISO 400 when other colours start to form in dark areas and edge detail takes a significant nosedive. The latter exacerbates at ISO 800 as salt and pepper noise begins to be a problem. In a bizarre twist of fate, the black and white noise masks the colour noise slightly although it's short lived because it comes back with a vengeance at ISO 1600. Noise reduction has dropped the saturation of the sensor to try and suppress the colour noise, but it does little to help. ISO 3200 uses an old trick of reducing the resolution (in this case to around 3.8 megapixels) to reduce certain types of noise which are created by heat generated from neighbouring pixels. If they're spaced further apart, they won't affect the picture as much. This does indeed work with colour noise being brought back under control. Of course, the downside is that image size is a lot smaller, so you can't print and enlarge it as much.

ISO 80 (100% Crop)	ISO 100 (100% Crop)
ISO 200 (100% Crop)	ISO 400 (100% Crop)
ISO 800 (100% Crop)	ISO 1600 (100% Crop)
ISO 3200 (100% Crop)

Focal Range

In 35mm terms, the focal length of the Nikon Coolpix S2800 is 26-130mm. There's some fish eye at 26mm, but that's to be expected from such a wide setting.

26mm	130mm

Sharpening

As the pictures are saved onto the memory card, the Nikon Coolpix S2800's processor will automatically perform some image improvements such as colour boosting and sharpening. We did find that even though this happens the pictures still benefit from some additional sharpening in post production.

Original (100% Crop)	Sharpened (100% Crop)

File Quality

In the right conditions, we managed to get some super sharp pictures from the Nikon Coolpix S2800 which show off that 20 megapixel count brilliantly. But these are typically very bright lighting with a low ISO and a tripod to keep the camera still. They're not everyday conditions.

The resolution can be altered on the S2800 and the top resolution can also be changed to use a higher or lower compression. If you choose the 20M setting with the star, you get the highest quality. This isn't the default setting, so be careful, but you do get pictures around 7.5 - 8Mb in size. Drop down to the 20M without the star and you can get pictures at 4.2Mb. This lower file size will use less space on your card meaning more pictures, but there's also less detail. The camera uses 20 megapixels on both settings, but JPEG are lossy files, which means as they save, information is discarded. The setting you choose determines just how much.

High (100% Crop)	Normal (100% Crop)

Chromatic Aberrations

We did find evidence of chromatic aberration and in the weirdest of situations. The conditions were always the same – a light foreground with an edge over a dark background. But we found it in shadows and in various points of the frame with no real consistency.

Chromatic Aberrations 1 (100% Crop)	Chromatic Aberrations 2 (100% Crop)
Chromatic Aberrations 3 (100% Crop)	Chromatic Aberrations 4 (100% Crop)

Macro

The close focusing of the Nikon Coolpix S2800 is 10cm and by today's standards, that's quite poor. The typical minimum distance should be around 5cm with some cameras around the same price even getting to 3cm these days. It makes taking close-ups very difficult to do. Still, the centre is sharp and the good thing about a more distant focusing, is that there's less fish eye distortion.

Macro	Macro (100% Crop)

Flash

The Nikon Coolpix S2800 suffers from some vignetting at wide-angle and this is regardless of whether the flash is on or off. Using flash simply stabilises the available light and makes it more consistent. Without flash, the vignette does disappear as you use the zoom function but while using flash it tends to remain.

Flash Off - Wide Angle (26mm)	Flash On - Wide Angle (26mm)
Flash Off - Telephoto (130mm)	Flash On - Telephoto (130mm)

We didn't get any red-eye on our test images, which is a good sign, but should you get it and decide that you don't simply want it reducing, the Playback menu has a red-eye removal option which will digitally remove any red-eye. Nikon have made a good system with this too, it's surprisingly accurate.

Flash On	Flash On (100% Crop)
Red Eye Reduction	Red Eye Reduction (100% Crop)

Night

The night shoot has resulted in us getting very similar images from the Nikon Coolpix S2800. In fact, the only difference in the settings is that the Night scene mode used a longer shutter speed of 2sec compared to 1sec in Auto mode. Of course, this is using the Night scene mode in Tripod setting. There is a hand-held version which ramps up the ISO in order to get a faster shutter speed.

Night Auto	Night Auto (100% Crop)
Night Scene	Night Scene (100% Crop)

Sample Images

This is a selection of sample images from the Nikon Coolpix S2800 camera, which were all taken using the 20 megapixel Fine JPEG setting. The thumbnails below link to the full-sized versions, which have not been altered in any way.

Sample Movie & Video

Product Images

Front of the Nikon Coolpix S2800

Front of the Nikon Coolpix S2800 / Turned On

Side of the Nikon Coolpix S2800

Side of the Nikon Coolpix S2800

Rear of the Nikon Coolpix S2800

Rear of the Nikon Coolpix S2800 / Image Displayed

Rear of the Nikon Coolpix S2800 / Turned On

Rear of the Nikon Coolpix S2800 / Quick Effects

Rear of the Nikon Coolpix S2800 / Main Menu

Rear of the Nikon Coolpix S2800 / Main Menu

Rear of the Nikon Coolpix S2800 / Main Menu

Rear of the Nikon Coolpix S2800 / Main Menu

Top of the Nikon Coolpix S2800

Bottom of the Nikon Coolpix S2800

Side of the Nikon Coolpix S2800

Side of the Nikon Coolpix S2800

Front of the Nikon Coolpix S2800

Memory Card Slot

Battery Compartment

Conclusion

Using the Nikon Coolpix S2800 is a straightforward affair. The S series is one step up from the L series in that it offers slightly more manual control to the user. Some would argue that makes it more user friendly as it offers budding photographers the chance to expand their knowledge. The L series of cameras remove that possibility.

Should you be a happy snapper that only wants to point and shoot, that's perfectly acceptable and you can even use the same Auto Scene mode that the L series cameras use. The controls are easy enough to use throughout although they suffer with the typical lag found on budget Nikon compact cameras. Downloading a high resolution image onto the memory card also seem to take an age which doesn't seem befitting of the EXPEED name.

Image quality is pretty good with decent colouration and sharp edges. The big surprise is in the noise performance testing. Noise seems to be present throughout and the NR does appear to work hard to keep it under control. At the highest setting, colour noise just seems to disappear as though it was never there. We've seen this trick of reducing the resolution before and it's never produced results like these.

For the price, you're getting a good enough camera. There are features that will appeal to many members of the family and the fact that the Nikon Coolpix S2800 is available in many different colours means you should be able to strike a happy medium. The 5x optical zoom should deal with almost any situation and the digital filters will appeal to the younger members of the family and the Instagram crowd.

Because of the low price of the S2800, it makes it all that more expendable. What we mean by that is accidents happen and if you drop an £80 camera, it's slightly more easier to cope with than if a £300 camera is dropped. If you're a family looking to get a picture taking machine for everyone to use, then you won't go far wrong using the Nikon Coolpix S2800.

Ratings (out of 5)
Design	3.5
Features	3.5
Ease-of-use	4.5
Image quality	4
Value for money	4.5

Main Rivals

Listed below are some of the rivals of the Nikon Coolpix S2800.

Review Roundup

Reviews of the Nikon Coolpix S2800 from around the web.

Specifications

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