Nikon Coolpix S4300 review

The S4300 is an ultra-compact point-and-shooter with stylish curves and a touchscreen interface. It’s available in red, black, white and silver, although the latter is more of a champagne finish. It would look perfectly at home nestling in a Prada handbag, but isn’t so overtly feminine as to make it a ladies-only camera.

Touchscreen interfaces on cameras can be hit and miss but this is one of the better examples. Nikon has redesigned its menus from scratch for touchscreen operation, with big icons rather than scrolling lists. Autofocus and metering options are combined into a Touch AF/AE mode, which uses the touchscreen to place the autofocus and metering point pretty much anywhere in the frame (the outer edges aren’t allowed). Power, shutter release, video record/pause, shooting mode and playback have dedicated hardware buttons, and there’s the usual lever for the generous 6x zoom function.

Performance is generally up to scratch, with responsive autofocus and an average of 1.8 seconds between shots in our tests. Continuous mode was passable at 1.1fps, slowing to 0.6fps after eight shots. It was slow to switch on and shoot, though, at 3.6 seconds. When we pressed the shutter button straight after switching on, the camera powered up and then sat there doing nothing rather than taking a photo as soon as it was ready. The meagre 180-shot battery life is another concern, and in-camera charging means it can’t charge one battery while using another.

The video mode is limited to 720p recording, and the inefficient M-JPEG encoding gobbles up around 230MB per minute. Along with the usual 4GB file size limit, this restricts clips to just over eight minutes each. Optical zoom is fixed for the duration of clips, and the digital zoom made a mess of picture quality. By default, autofocus is fixed during recording, too. There is an option for full-time autofocus but it consistently failed to lock onto a new subject mid-way through a clip. With noisy shadows even in bright sunlight and no HDMI output, we can’t imagine this video mode seeing a lot of use.

Even at a conservative ISO 200 setting, noise reduction has made a mess of this foliage and hasn’t coped too well with the water either

Sadly, photo quality wasn’t much better. With a needlessly high 16-megapixel resolution packed into the tiny 1/2.3in sensor, we saw the usual litany of noise problems. Noise reduction smeared fine details in bright light, but failed to suppress multi-coloured blotches and grainy shadows when lower light or longer zoom positions called for faster ISO speeds. Aggressive sharpening was used in bright light to accentuate details but it gave high-contrast lines an artificial looking glow. Automatic exposures were well judged and focus seemed to be OK, although the limitations of the sensor made it impossible for us to assess the lens’s sharpness with any confidence.

Details are sharp here, but the halo along the edge of the branch is a tell-tale sign of aggressive digital sharpening

The S4300 isn’t a terrible camera, but it’s beaten on virtually every front by the Canon PowerShot SX230 HS. The Ixus has a bigger zoom, faster continuous performance, longer battery life and vastly superior photo and video quality, especially in low light. It’s well worth the extra £20.