Nikon Coolpix S1100pj review

Other changes are less welcome, however. Physical buttons have been abandoned in favour of a touchscreen, which we found much slower and more cumbersome to operate than a camera with conventional controls. It didn’t help that the touchscreen sometimes failed to respond, but a worse issue was that it sometimes took a couple of seconds to respond – or longer when browsing video clips. The result was that we’d repeatedly prod the screen to no avail, whereupon the camera would suddenly spring to life and respond as if we’d deliberately pressed the screen multiple times, overshooting the desired menu page or setting.

Our biggest gripe is the move to 14 megapixels. Even at the base speed of ISO 80, darker areas of photos were blotchy. High-contrast, clearly defined objects were rendered well but subtle textures such as skin and foliage lacked clarity and appeared a little grainy. Corner sharpness was poor and automatic exposures often used excessively long shutter speeds that resulted in blurry shots.

The combined camera and projector is an appealing idea but the S1100pj simply isn’t a good enough camera, especially at this price. If you’re really keen, then we recommend buying the older S1000pj, which is currently available for £180 from www.parkcameras.com.