Nikon COOLPIX S3100 14 MP Digital Camera with 5x NIKKOR Wide-Angle Optical Zoom Lens and 2.7-Inch LCD (Silver)

This camera ended up being a really great choice for me. (The secret to it's general great functioning was that I put a Class 10 Card in it. I did not have the lag in functioning that is mentioned in many poor reviews.) Some of the other negatives that I read in other reviews were very true (1. it's slippery -- but I have little hands and once I got used to it I learned to grip it well (and I forced myself to use the strap); 2. it is hard to get a really good photo close up -- but I could live with that; 3. I do wish it had a zoom that goes closer up...oh well; 4) it is sometimes hard to get a clear photo, but with practice and trying different settings, and taking multiple photos --film is cheap nowadays-- I was able to get tons of really nice photos anyway; I also found that many times the flash washed things out too much). For a small, very light-weight, easy-to-use, reliable, inexpensive camera, this was a really great buy (in spite of it's drawbacks). And I wasn't walking around guarding it all the time. I used it and took about 7,000 photos on my trip! and it still looks/acts new. Also, I was able to easily video a swim meet in Italy that came out perfectly beautiful!! (I attribute that to the Class 10 card.) PS: I did not want the new touchscreen (just another thing that can break, plus I wear sunscreen on my hands, etc).

To put this in context, we purchased this camera as one of a handful of point-and-shoots; we bought a Nikon D90 shortly before having our first child, which is a stellar DSLR, to add to an old Panasonic Lumix point-and-shoot that did take pretty good pictures, despite an excessively bright flash. After a couple of years, we wanted to 'downgrade' back to to point-and-shoot cameras, given that ours is about 5 years old, and newer ones are both more high-tech and relatively inexpensive for the given level of technology. We bought 'a few' to serve a couple of more or less specific roles, all shy of the DSLR's "big heavy super-high-quality photograph field cannon" role. The purpose of this one was to be... well, the cheap one. The everyday, easy-to-use, no-brainer, compact and lightweight and easy for my wife to put in the diaper bag and take to the museum or the park with the kids. Cheap enough that if you lost it or it got scratched by car keys, no big deal, nice enough to take good basic photos but otherwise no particularly fancy features. Now, put in that context, time for the inevitable 'pros' and 'cons'. Pros: - Extremely compact, lightweight, 'sexy' design with chrome details around silver metal body - Fast start-up, about 2.5 seconds to power up - Continuous shooting can get maybe a hair more than 1 picture per second. Specs list as 0.7s intervals. - Battery life seems to be good so far, about 200 pictures and several videos over the course of 3 days with all varieties of flash and zoom and the battery still indicates fully charged - Zoom is pretty powerful for such a compact camera Cons: - Skittish. It's hard to get a clear picture from the thing even with a steady hand. Image stabilization does nothing as far as I can tell. - Because of the former, producing sharp pictures with continuous shooting is pretty much hopeless - Focus is hopeless in ISO3200. No, with any automatic or manual setting, with or without the flash, focus is hopeless. About 1 out of every 4 pictures came out well-focused. Even focused pictures seem to have blurry points in the same range as other objects that are at the same distance, even near the center of the scene. This is even for things like city scenes in full daylight. - Abandon all hope, ye who shoot photos indoors... focus is abysmal. Did I already make this point? - Because the focus is so poor, zooming in on anything, even a little, is absolutely and totally hopeless. Taking pictures of animals at the museum came out occasionally reasonably focused; zooming in as little as 2x produced worthless blurry shot after worthless blurry shot - As with pretty much every point-and-shoot, the flash creates a scene completely washed out with white light - needs to be diffused. - Very slow to become responsive after a photo; with or without a photo review, the camera takes about 5s to become responsive and available for another photo. This appears to be the case with 3mp the same as 14mp. Just very, very, very slow. - Very slow to delete a picture; deleting a picture you don't like takes 3 clicks, then about 3 seconds to complete the operation. It's a little surprising how any device (phone, camera, gps, tablet, anything) could take that long to complete a simple operation... - The shutter speed is too slow or simply wrong; if you have kids, who are naturally always in motion, they'll be a blur even if they're standing still to pose for a photo. - Slow to actually fire a shot after zooming and pushing the button - sometimes 1 to 2 second delay, which means, the subject (kids!) is often simply gone by the time it actually shoots. - Grainy. Even in broad daylight, color fields on high-res pics, like buildings and peoples' faces, is grainy and pixellated with blotchy color tones. - Video. Can't record smoothly, even at lower resolution, with a high-quality Class 6 SDHC card. Don't bother with video. To be perfectly fair and objective, I took this camera and our Samsung ST-95 outside and took two shots per camera, of each of five subjects, in the same resolution, at the same time. I chose the sharper of the two photos from each camera and renamed the file generically. I then brought up the photos on our 1080p 55" TV - the largest-format, highest-resolution screen in the house. I showed them to my wife and asked her to choose "before" and "after", letting her know that I had swapped the order of the pictures randomly (so that A wasn't always the Nikon, B wasn't always the Samsung). In 5 out of 5 cases, she picked (and I agreed) the Samsung's pictures, simply on the focus. The Nikon just can't focus correctly. For example, on the back patio, the kids' tricycle is relatively focused, but the grill right beside it - both near the center of the shot - is entirely blurred out. All of my subjects were stationary out of necessity; I could not get a single clear picture of the kids or dogs with the Nikon, so there was no relevant comparison to be made. Using "scenes" to balance the settings made absolutely no difference on focus, only color balance. Overall, this camera is a fine solution if you don't expect much and you won't do much with it. You could shoot some video or take pictures of inert objects at medium range in full daylight and maybe one out of every two or three photos will be focused enough to pass a cursory inspection (don't look too close), but beyond that I'm afraid this camera just can't perform acceptably. It'll capture images, but they won't be GOOD. Despite the aforementioned purpose for which we bought this camera, we'll probably take around one of the better / other ones instead. It's really just about as well not to take a picture of those 'precious moments', as to attempt to do so with this camera. Other folks who have claimed that they are satisfied with this camera just can't be looking very closely at their pictures; after three outings and a few hundred pictures I am just amazed at how poor the quality of the shots are, in every environment, every light, every kind of subject. It's not for lack of use or lack of knowledge/experience with digital cameras; this really just has an extremely poor-quality sensor and processor and, I would assume, sub-standard firmware. I suggest looking at other entry-level offerings such as Samsung ST-65. Or, go for a mid-range camera. You really should only consider this camera if the looks of the camera itself matter a whole lot more than the quality of the pictures it can take - and, if the quality of the pictures it takes don't matter much at all to you. If you do care about the ability to capture images, this camera will not be satisfactory. I do not recommend this camera.

After reading several of the reviews that indicate that this camera is sub par such as "The picture quality is poor", and "The VR is useless". I was hesitant to buy this camera, but also saw some reviews that indicated otherwise. So I decided to make the purchase. I couldn't be happier. I normally use my Nikon DSLR most of the time, but wanted a small camera to carry while riding my road bike on Century, and other long distant road bike rides. The camera has been great from the start, and is very easy to use. The first time I used it after recieving the camera was on a Metric Century bike ride where I took about 30 photo's of other cyclist as well of myself with other cyclist behind me while riding down the road. In this situation it was diffacult to hold the camera still as I was pedaling and had to also pay attention to my riding. I was amazed at the quality and sharpness of all the photo's. I have since used the camera on several other bike rides and am just amazed. Of 100 plus photo's that I have taken thus far all of which were taken while riding my bike, there were only one or two that had some slight blur, and were deleated. This is the second Nikon digital point and shot camera that I have owned, the previous was a S220, and I think that this one is by far a better camera. Not much more to say other than this camera fits my needs very well. I think it is a great camera.

this camera is for you. This camera does have some great features, some of which I have not even had time to use yet. The main draw, however, (other than the size) is that it is simple and easy to use. There are tons of point and shoot cameras out there, and there is no use being snobby over which one you buy, because they all do pretty much the same thing. This one is great for the price. You could get a nicer camera, but for 90% of the people in the market for a digital camera, this will do what you need and want it to, and more. I use mine mainly for snapshots and spontaneous pictures with friends and the like. However, I do enjoy photography, and I have experience with SLR cameras as well (and I own one). Therefore, I also sometimes take artistic shots. This camera does it all unless you are a professional photographer, in which case, you already know you need a different camera. The size is perfect. This will even fit in small pockets on skinny jeans or whatever. The case I bought with the camera adds some bulk, but the camera is so slim, even the case fits in my pockets comfortably. I use Amazon Student Prime, so shipping is never a hassle. I can't really comment on other shipping speeds. The package was simple, but the camera box protects the camera with styrofoam and cardboard, and the shipping box used inflated plastic bags to keep the camera box safe. Someone would really have to try to damage the camera to manage it. Amazon lists plenty of features of this camera, but here is my list: RECHARGEABLE! Records HD movies with one button Big LCD screen on back to help compose pictures in a size you can actually see 19 scenes to choose from to assist in getting a better picture Pet Focus will find your pet's face and once focused, will shoot the picture There are several cool filters like selective coloring, a miniature effect and a fisheye effect Is tiny and lightweight Comes in cool colors This camera will even warn you if it thinks someone blinked. Bottom line: This camera is what you want. I search for weeks or longer before deciding to buy something, and I chose this camera. For a point and shoot, it has everything you need, and so many things you didn't even know you wanted. Unless you don't actually know what you're looking for, you won't regret buying this camera.

From the moment I opened the box and saw the brilliant purple of this camera I was in love. I'm not a techno of any kind so how the camera looked was kind of important to me. But it is a CAMERA, after all. So, I took some pictures. And then, I took the camera to England. What can I say? Three weeks of absolutely gorgeous pictures. Driving 50 miles an hour down the highway, in the rain, past Stonehenge and got fabulous shots. No blurring, could even see the crows wheeling in the air. Love the zoom feature and the edit and save feature right in the camera. Filled up two memory cards with pictures and loved that I could charge the battery from my laptop. Still, the picture is the most important thing about a camera and this one takes beautiful shots, close ups, panoramas and short videos. Even chugging along the coastline in a boat, the camera somehow stabilized the shots so no blurry, "what the heck is that?" kind of shots. So, why not five stars? Well, my only quibble is that the delay time when using the flash could get a little annoying, especially when I wanted to capture a lot of indoor/nighttime pictures really quickly. But that's the only complaint I have. Great little camera. I'm so glad I got it!

I ordered this camera to use for taking pictures of my jewelery to post for sale on Etsy.com. I ordered it 11-28-11 and received it on 12-7-11. It worked fine for my first use on a hike around my local park. the secound time I used it was on new year's eve. half way through the night the camera shut itself off. I thought it was simply the battery being spent but soon realized that was not the case. The shutter was half open/closed and the ligths on the camera were blinking. I tried everything to trouble shoot the camera but eventually it jsut completely shut down with the apature still stuck. I contacted Amazon customer service the next day and within 10 minuets on the phone with a very nice represtative they had a order in for my replacement. I was informed that I should return the broken one with the box form the new camera once it arrived. So I waited...and waited. After a while of it being in the "has not shipped" status i contacted Amazon customer support, this time via live chat. once again a spoke to a very nice representative who advised me the delay was due to in being out of stock (I had ordered a specific color so I believed that to be the reason). I was okay with waiting further due to that explaination. The trouble came later after it had been close to 2 months of waiting and I again contacted Amazon for a status update. Again a very pleasant representative was there to answer my questions. My main concern was that the replacement order had disappeared off of my orders page and I inquired as to the reason for this. It was determined that the order had been canceled...the reason behind this? It was that they were totally out of stock with these cameras completely. Apparently the third party seller ADORAMA Camera was not able to provide Amazon with these cameras any further. I would normally not hav had a probelm with this had I been notified of this in any way, shape or form...but I wasn't. Not by Amazon nor the seller. Also after the extensive wait and the many times I was told that they were working on getting the replacement out to me, I feel that I was just being moved throught the system. I thanked the representative for his ground work and kiindness in the matter, as he did send out a email for me to print out a pre-paided return label and offer a $10 promotion towards my account, and proceeded to ask if I may speak to a manager. My conern in talking to the manager was a few things: 1)To place a formal compaint against this third party sller and that Amazon not work with them further 2)The camera that I ordered was still for sale on Amazon, if so why was it that I couldn't get a replacement in another color. 3) A smple return for my money was not acceptable to me after nearly 3 months of toil and still not hving the product I wished, promotion or not. So I spoke to a lovely woman for a while about my concerns and after some time we came to a conclusion of my devising. Since Amazon couldn't provide my with a replacement from the camera I ordered, nor providing it in a different color, due to the seller not being able to get the product to Amazon (I WOULD STRONGLY RECOMEND NEVER BUYING FROM ADORAMA!!), I suggested that they provide me with a different model of the same camera that was stocked, sold and shipped directly through Amazon (Nikon COOLPIX S6100 16 MP Digital Camera with 7x NIKKOR Wide-Angle Optical Zoom Lens and 3-Inch Touch-Panel LCD (Silver)(http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B004M8SVEI). The manager agreed that she would go ahead and do a one time replacement for this product for my defective camera and also place the $10 promotion offered to me on the price as well. In conclusion, this whole matter has been a wretch, but after everything Amazon was able to come throught for me and satisfy my order by providing me with a product and not just a return and a rebate, which I am very greatful for. The seller ADORAMA is the worst I have ever dealt with and I would warn anyone against them. My faith is still with Amazon, even if there was a slight waiver, and I will continue to shop and buy from them, while being more careful of third party sellers.

I purchased the Nikon Coolpix as a small camera to carry around in my backpack. When it arrived I was mildly disappointed in the quality, it just felt "cheap", but I guess you get what you pay for, I expected something a bit more rugged. The camera takes decent pictures, but is painfully slow. Furthermore after 6 months the lens jammed and after returning the camera to Nikon warranty for repair, they claimed that it was impact damage and thus not covered. Which was completely untrue, the camera was stored in a hard shell case at all times and never dropped. I was holding the camera when the lens jammed while turning it off. Unless you want to waste your money I would steer way clear of Nikon and their Coolpix cameras. And do not ever trust their warranty.

Camera qualities is amazing and control buttons are easy to use