Hey folks, Valkor here. For me, WonderCon wasn't all about the comics, the anime, and the movie stuff. It was also about playing with new gadgets. And one of those gadgets was the Nikon Coolpix S10 digicam. This unique cam provides all the functions of a digicam but adds one unique feature that separates it from the pack.
For starters The S10 looks like your standard cam, its size is portable and it's not too heavy to weigh down your pockets or bag. It only comes in one color, silver and provides a 2.5 inch TFT LCD view screen that's pretty sharp and you can even adjust the brightness. But the unique feature the S10 has is the eyepiece's ability to swivel. This baby can do a 180 so that you can take a pic of yourself or with a friend if there is no one around to hold the camera for you. At first I thought this was a wasted type of gimmick, but trying it out… I take it back and deem it a worthy feature. It also uses SD cards, which if I am not mistaken go as high as 4 gigs. But I think 1 gig is more than enough because you can take over 600 pics in 6mp mode and 10 hour of video. NICE!
The S10 is a 6 MP camera that takes some great pictures, again much better than what I had expected. Colors are sharp and clear, though not as crisp as they are with the Fuji f20. As a matter of fact I prefer the Fuji F20 because everything comes across more natural and vibrant. Here the colors seem a bit muted, but overall I am pleased with what the S10 can do. Video quality is also a plus, but for some reason they chose to use quicktime as the format of choice rather than avi or mpeg-4, which is my format of choice. Films don't come out all framey, but it needs help with the sound as it tends to pic up just about everything, which made it rather grating to the ears.
As far as features go, the S10 comes packed with em. One feature, the VR or Vibration reduction, is the one that I am most displeased with because of the fact that while it does reduce the shaking, some pics still come out as blurry. Other features you get are a wide assortment of modes such as Panorama, Museum, day and night modes, but nothing like what you would get if you used a Casio Exilim. Again no complaints there as they get the job done. You also get several flash options, which includes red eye reduction, and it has a zoom of up to 10x with an additional 4x digital zoom. The 10X zoom is pretty sweet because it really gets you up close, the 4X helps, but it puts things in the fuz area. An example is this pic of Gerard Butler, taken at WonderCon, when I was seated far back. Yea I can get right up on the guy, but damn its quite blurry. Finally to complete the package is the overall layout which works well, though the power button and picture taking button could be a bit different, I sometimes got them mixed up.
Overall I am impressed with the power that is the Nikon Coolpix S10 and I think that most people who pick up this cam will be pleased with their purchase. Yes there are some areas that can be improved upon but I like it nonetheless. You can get yours retail at 349.99 and Nikon's Coolpix S10 has been Valkor Tested, TOV approved.