Nikon Coolpix S600: Video and Image Quality

Video Quality
The S6000 takes good looking HD videos at 1280x720 resolution at 30 frames per second, with stereo sound. Here's a video of Koi fish, Japanese carp, taken at the National Arboretum in Washington, D.C.

Image Quality
By far the best aspect of the images produced by the S6000 are their highly accurate color. In virtually every picture I took the colors appeared to be spot on.

Part of the reason is the excellent auto white balance that the camera produces, both indoors and outdoors. In case you're unhappy with the auto white balance, you do have the option of using alternatives such as daylight, incandescent, fluorescent, cloudy, flash and manual preset using your own white reference.

Auto White Balance, 3200k incandescent light

The S6000 can focus as close as 3 cm for taking macro shots if the camera is at its extreme wide angle. Macro shots can also be taken by standing further away and using the camera's long zoom, if getting closer to the object is not possible or shadows will affect the image.

Wide Angle

Maximum Zoom

Shooting in bright sunshine was sometimes a problem due to overexposure (clipping). This is evident in most small cameras, to varying degrees. I tried using the camera's D-lighting feature, which did a good job lightening areas that were too dark, but it did not improve areas that were too bright.

Original

After D-Lighting

As the photos below indicate, the S6000 produces moderately sharp, clear images with low noise and good color through 200 ISO. Softness increases at 400 ISO and noise substantially increases at 800 ISO.

ISO 100	ISO 100, 100% crop
ISO 200	ISO 200, 100% crop
ISO 400	ISO 400, 100% crop
ISO 800	ISO 800, 100% crop
ISO 1600	ISO 1600, 100% crop
ISO 3200	ISO 3200, 100% crop

Images are not much worse at 1600 ISO but at 3200 ISO images are too noisy to be used except for emergencies. Throughout, however, the S6000 maintains good color, which is consistent with my observations about the camera's dependable color accuracy.

Additional Sample Images