Introduction

Ease of Use

It's an interesting turn that the designers have taken with the Nikon Coolpix S6700. Looking at the front, you'd think they'd placed the lens incorrectly, as it sits towards the bottom of the face like a giant wheel on a watermill. Most of that is a silver bezel that doesn't affect the operability of the lens which is a 10x optical zoom.

Vibration Reduction (VR) has also been used in the lens system. VR is Nikon's image stabilising system. It uses a variety of features such as optical stabilisers and high ISO to allow the Nikon Coolpix S6700 to select a faster shutter speed which freezes the action. This in turn eliminates camera shake. Raising the ISO on the camera can reduce image quality as noise will enter the image the higher you go. You can reduce the need for this by steadying the camera on something before you take a shot, such as a wall, table or tripod. You can then select a lower ISO setting in the menu system to reduce noise and increase sharpness of the pictures.

On the top of the Nikon Coolpix S6700, there's only a small, sunken power button – which has a green ring around it to tell you when it's on – and the shutter release button with a large zoom ring wrapped round it. The larger zoom ring is generally a sign of cameras that are for the budget conscious as smaller rings cost more to fit so will be on more expensive cameras. However, there is an advantage if you have larger hands or limited movement, the larger zoom will be easier to operate.

Move onto the back of the Nikon Coolpix S6700 and the smaller buttons are used once again. They're arranged in a typical formation of four smaller control buttons around a navigation pad. Next to the thumb rest, there's a direct video record button meaning you can get those candid moments with motion.

Front	Rear

The S6700 takes a lithium ion battery as its power source. The battery requires a dedicated charger which is included in the box alongside a UK three pin adapter and a USB cable. The latter also doubles as the charging lead which bridges the gap between camera and charging unit. This way of internal charging reduces the amount of equipment and accessories you have to carry. While we're looking in the box, there's also a wrist strap to attach it to you for safe keeping. In the top section of the box, you'll find a Quick Start Guide which looks very long but is in several languages which takes up most of the bulk. Interestingly, Nikon have provided a CD with ViewNX 2 on it. A CD is something we've started to get accustomed to be absent in the box with everything now available for download on the Nikon website. Notably, the full manual which is normally also on the CD is still missing and will require a visit to the Nikon website.

From a cold start, the S6700 will power up, focus and take a picture in around 2sec. That's slightly slower than the 1.5-1.8sec that we're now used to seeing on newer cameras. The Nikon Coolpix S6700 does have a continuous shooting mode in the Main menu. We managed to take seven images in a ten second period which gives an average of around 0.7fps (frames per second).

In order to take photographs in continuous shooting, you have to change the Nikon Coolpix S6700 into that mode in the Main menu. You can do this by pressing the Menu button on the back of the camera. The menu screen is split into three sections. The left section shows you whether you're in the Shooting menu, Video menu or Set-up menu. These sub menus essentially make it easier to navigate. By pressing left, you can flick through the tabs in order to move through the pages.

Front	Top

In the Shooting menu, you can make changes such as the resolution, ISO, white-balance and various focusing modes. There are lots of options to change unlike the Video section which has only four. They cover the resolution, focus mode, VR and wind noise reduction. The final Set-up tab is larger, similar to the Shooting tab. Here you can go more indepth with what you change, such as the time & date, sound settings, language and card format.  The section in the centre shows the various options available to you in each tab, while on the right is the current setting in that option. You can press right on the navigation pad, or the OK button to enter each menu.

The colour scheme is a two-tone light and dark grey with contrasting font (white on dark grey, black on light grey) and has a yellow highlighter to show where you are.

On top of the Main menu, there's also a Mode menu which is accessed by pressing the green camera button on the back of the camera. It brings up the modes to the right of the screen and you use the navigation pad to scroll up or down for the mode you wish to select. On some of the options you'll see a little right arrow and if you press right when you see this, it takes you into a separate menu to select a different mode to be brought up there. It's a way of making the camera a little more user friendly.

Memory Card Slot	Battery Compartment

Once you've taken some photographs, you may wish to see them on the back of the Nikon Coolpix S6700. It's most certainly best to wait until you get back to the computer before you start judging them properly as the resolution of the screen is nowhere near that of the picture so you'll not see a lot of information that will be present on a larger screen.

Just like pressing the green camera brings up a Mode button, pressing the blue arrow also brings up a Playback Mode menu. In this you have four options and they offer alternatives for sorting through your pictures for easier viewing.

In the main Playback menu, there's only two options for Playback and the aforementioned Set-up menu. Here you can perform some basic editing such as D-Lighting, red-eye correction, Quick or Glamour retouching. There's also options to create a slide-show, rotate the picture, copy the picture or add a voice memo.

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

Low ISO settings are understandably good quality with no obvious noise becoming apparent. The Nikon Coolpix S6700 has an ISO 80 setting as well as ISO 100. That's only around a third of a stop difference and when it comes to the crunch, which won't make much difference to your exposure.

Things seem pretty quiet until ISO 200 where there seems to be a degree of sharpening in dark areas as though noise reduction is playing around with the settings. There  looks to be very small amounts of blue noise coming through, but we can't be sure. However, skipping to ISO 400 confirms that we were seeing it as bright blue spots begin to appear. Detail starts to dissipate in the darker areas, but midtones still look good.

At ISO 800, it looks as though the camera has got things under control as noise levels seem to go back to ISO 200 levels. Colours that are supposed to be on the picture aren't suppressed, though and edges look surprisingly sharp. At ISO 1600, the noise has returned but is still better than what we expect to see at this setting. The final setting is ISO 3200 and the S6700 uses a lower resolution in order to reduce on certain types of noise that are created by heat from neighbouring pixels. The further away from each other they are, the less they affect each other. Aside from some sporadic bright blue spots, the picture looks ok.

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

The Nikon Coolpix S6700 has a 10x optical zoom which starts at 25mm and zooms out to 250mm.

25mm	250mm

Sharpening

Adding sharpening to the pictures after you've taken them via an editing suite is acceptable enough and the pictures look good. If the ISO is too high, the pictures will look worse, though so only add sharpening if the sensitivity is around ISO 100 or ISO 200.

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

File Quality

There are two 20 megapixel settings on the Nikon Coolpix S6700. The one with the star is the Fine compression setting and the one without is the Normal compression. I Fine, a typical picture is around 7.5Mb while in Normal it's around 4.2Mb. The amount of pixels remains the same in these settings, but the camera will lose data as it saves to the memory card. This can result in fine detail areas with less detail, but the Normal setting does release a lot of extra space on the memory card.

Fine (7.57Mb) (100% Crop)	Normal (4.18Mb) (100% Crop)

Chromatic Aberrations

Chromatic aberration isn't forth coming on the Nikon Coolpix S6700. In fact, we had a hard time finding any at all.

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

Macro

Close focusing on the Nikon Coolpix S6700 is around 5cm at wide-angle which is by no means the best results that you can get even at this price point. Pictures are very sharp in the centre sweet spot, though. When image quality does drop off, it's not by too much either.

Macro	Macro (100% Crop)

Flash

There's an ever-so-small amount of vignetting that occurs in the corners of the frame. It doesn't matter where the zoom is or whether the flash is on or off, it appears. Using flash does make it more prominent, though.

Flash Off - Wide Angle (25mm)	Flash On - Wide Angle (25mm)
Flash Off - Telephoto (250mm)	Flash On - Telephoto (250mm)

We didn't have any problems with red-eye in our test shots, so we couldn't effectively test the red-eye reduction features of the S6700. Red-eye is handled via the red-eye reduction feature in the flash settings.

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

Night

There are two Night scene settings on the Nikon Coolpix S6700. You can select from either Hand-held or tripod. The latter lowers the ISO to increase the quality of the image as it can use a slower shutter speed. The camera did just that and went down to ISO 80 compared to the ISO 800 in Hand-held mode. It matches the settings in Auto mode, with the exception that it's limited to 1sec exposures, whereas the Night scene mode can go to 2sec to get a better exposure.

Night Scene Handheld	Night Scene Handheld (100% Crop)
Night Scene Tripod	Night Scene Tripod (100% Crop)
Night Program Auto	Night Program Auto (100% Crop)
Night Program ISO80	Night Program ISO80 (100% Crop)

Sample Images

This is a selection of sample images from the Nikon Coolpix S6700 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 S6700

Front of the Nikon Coolpix S6700 / Lens Extended

Side of the Nikon Coolpix S6700

Side of the Nikon Coolpix S6700

Rear of the Nikon Coolpix S6700

Rear of the Nikon Coolpix S6700 / Image Displayed

Rear of the Nikon Coolpix S6700 / Turned On

Rear of the Nikon Coolpix S6700 / Shooting Mode

Rear of the Nikon Coolpix S6700 / Main Menu

Rear of the Nikon Coolpix S6700 / Main Menu

Rear of the Nikon Coolpix S6700 / Main Menu

Rear of the Nikon Coolpix S6700 / Main Menu

Top of the Nikon Coolpix S6700

Bottom of the Nikon Coolpix S6700

Side of the Nikon Coolpix S6700

Side of the Nikon Coolpix S6700

Front of the Nikon Coolpix S6700

Memory Card Slot

Battery Compartment

Conclusion

The Nikon Coolpix S6700 is a decent enough little camera for the price that it's set at. We can't get carried away and say how wonderful it is, because it's not without faults. It's quite slow at starting up and the continuous shooting isn't the fastest for this price range. However, one area we are certainly happy with is the increase in noise control. The compact cameras that Nikon have been producing for the lower end of the market haven't been worthy of the brand name, but if the S6700 is anything to go by, it looks like we're seeing a turnaround.

Build quality is fairly standard. IThe Nikon Coolpix S6700 is primarily plastic with what looks like a metal front. The USB cover is made of rubber and the battery door has no lock on it. These aren't necessarily bad things, though. An area that the Nikon compacts have over close competitors is the ability to charge with minimal equipment. To charge the lithium ion battery, you just need the charging mains pack and the USB cable which you'll arguably take away with you anyway. It reduces the need for a charging pack that – with Canon especially – you fit the battery into after removing it from the camera.

Because of the cost, versatile zoom, compact recharging system and now the improved noise performance, the Nikon Coolpix S6700 looks to be a decent camera for taking abroad, on nights out and day events. The zoom will be able to bring many wonderful things much closer to you. The improved noise control will allow you to get decent pictures in darker conditions, such as evening entertainment or if you zoom out to distant areas. The digital filters will allow you to explore various creative ideas with your photos. You may even find that you start to think about the photograph you're going to take and the effect you want to apply once it's taken. Importantly the cost means that should the worst happen and the Nikon Coolpix S6700 gets broken, it won't break the bank to replace it.

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

Main Rivals

Listed below are some of the rivals of the Nikon Coolpix S6700.

Review Roundup

Reviews of the Nikon Coolpix S6700 from around the web.

Specifications

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