Stylish products with a slight need for improvement

The Nikon Coolpix S6400 is an extremely compact "superzoom" camera.
Only the dimensions 9.7 cm + 5.9 cm x 2.5 cm (I measured in the off state, Herstellangabe Case Thickness = 1.98 cm) make this camera to one of the smallest that a focal length range 25-300 mm (KB equivalent) feature.
In addition, however, that it has no "rough edges", but everything is somehow rounded so that it slides as if by magic in your pocket without being able to get stuck.

It comes with multilingual printed instruction booklet, complete manual on CD, photo editing software from Nikon, mains charger with cable, wrist strap and a plastic "Stylus".
Which is also attached battery must be charged before using, this is done in the camera. The plug adapter can stand 100 to 240 Volt input voltage, the USB cable used has on the camera side, unfortunately, no standardized Micro-USB connector, but a proprietary small-sized USB plug, so you do not arbitrarily to a cable z. B. could replace the smartphone.

The housing material is plastic, which acts as if it had been provided with a glossy varnish surface. This looks great, but is also very smooth, so that the camera could get out of hand easily unintentionally. One should therefore necessarily attach the attached wrist strap and use, since a fall with the lens can withstand such a camera is not certainly.

According to new trends (7.5 centimeters diagonal rd resolution 460,000 pixels.) Is also equipped this camera with a touch screen, the quality is not bad reflected: It is easy to read (in outdoor applications) and responds as a touch screen with resistive can react surface. You can not compare with the capacitive current smartphones these screens however.
Therefore, a "Stylus" is attached in the form of an elongated small piece of nylon plastic that you can use instead of the fingertips to control.

The most important settings have their own menu items on the screen, so you ISO speed, flash and macro settings can achieve immediately.

The optics has a 12 times zoom range (25 -. 300 mm KB-eq) where the light intensity at an acceptable Wide Aperture 3.1 has, the tele but only Aperture 6.5.
The ISO sensitivity begins at ISO 125, can be adjusted in two car-areas and also up to the value 3200.

Via a separate switch ("Scene") on the back can be adjusted:

- Programmed Auto
- Scene Modes
eg Portrait, Landscape, Sports, Night Portrait, Indoors, beach, snow ...
- Effects
- Smart portrait

Interesting also is the concept of "creative programs": Here one makes the Nikon first photo and then selects with which the creative programs you want to edit the recording.

There are also a number of post-processing options such. B. To resize an image, create excerpts, adapt Farbintensiät etc.

Videos can be up to HD-quality create.

Both the photo and in video mode uses a very effective optical image stabilizer, the camera shake in low light conditions and / or long focal length can prevent as much as possible.

And now the most important thing in a camera: What are the results?

For the highest resolution of 16 megapixels, there are two settings with different compression ratios: 1: 4 and 1: 8. I recommend the setting 1: 4, the go otherwise too many details.

For outdoor scenes in Program AE, I recommend to set the ISO sensitivity to 125, because then you get the best picture quality. The colors are of course represented, the focus is correct if the autofocus has collected his goal. However, this may take a while when changing the focal length before. Multiple took the focusing clearly on one second.

When shooting indoors (Program AE) mode with flash the Enstellung ISO has 125 because of the small flash no sense, it is recommended that at least the auto adjustment ISO 125 - 400. In this case, although some details are unfortunately weggebügelt, but does the illumination even at distances up to about 3 m in wide angle.

In very low light the camera will not focus when you have the AF assist lamp is disabled. In these cases, you have to activate it, unfortunately; During the day you can remain disabled easily.

Otherwise, the camera controls as part of the scene modes the ISO setting itself. So they can easily illuminate z. B. in indoor settings and large spaces.
If you look behind the Exif data, then you can see that it follows the ISO range up to ISO 1600 sometimes pulls up. These results can be should still view good and are good problems for web publishing or paper prints, but the camera expects as many details out that could produce posters which by no means.
Because applies both indoors and outdoors, the higher the ISO sensitivity, the more details are from the pictures eliminated and the stronger the image noise. The use of the small sensor (1 / 2.3 "C-MOS chip, precise size = 8.8 x 6.6 mm) at 16 megapixels urges halt its toll.

Select an option, aperture or shutter speed, or even all set completely manually, unfortunately, is not.

Video recordings are saved in MOV format in H.264 compression. You will benefit from the very powerful image stabilizer and have a good picture and sound quality.
Outside, you can produce so much beautiful movies. Although the noise of the zoom are only very weakly audible in the video later, however, the focusing operation takes at changing the focal length tlw. Quite long.

When shooting indoors, the camera helps in very low light conditions by setting the ISO sensitivity is very high.

As storage media SD, SDHC and SDXC cards are used; a map is as usual not included.

Summary:
Very compact, pocket-friendly camera with a large zoom range and decent image quality in normal shooting situations, which is also thanks to the powerful image stabilizer.
Better video quality, which also benefits from excellent image stabilizer.
A small weakness is the route sometimes quite slow focusing. Here I would consider upgrading the camera firmware the manufacturer.
Aperture priority, shutter priority and manual mode are missing, so that the targeted influencing of the resulting image can be carried out only within the framework of "scene modes".

The overall concept is true in any case, as long as you do not have (semi) -professionellen ambitions.

So I would recommend to anyone who is interested in an easily manageable compact camera on the go, recommend to deal with a bit more detail with the Nikon Coolpix S6400.