Nikon COOLPIX S3600 review

3rd December 2014

Written by Ken McMahon

Quality

Nikon COOLPIX S3600 vs Sony W830 JPEG

To compare real-life performance I shot this scene with the Nikon COOLPIX S3600 and Sony Cyber-shot W830 within a few moments of each other using their best quality JPEG settings.
Both camera lenses were set to their maximum 25mm wide angle focal length and set to Program Auto exposure mode.
For this test the cameras were mounted on a tripod. Image stabilisation was disabled on the COOLPIX S3600, but can’t be turned off on the Cyber-shot W830. The ISO sensitivity was manually set to the lowest available setting and all other settings were left on the defaults.
The image above was taken with the COOLPIX S3600. In Program Auto mode with the sensitivity manually set to 80 ISO the COOLPIX S3600 metered an exposure of 1/640 at f3.7. The Sony Cyber-shot W830, also set to 80 ISO set the exposure to 1/640 at f3.3. As usual the crops are taken from the areas marked in red above.
A first glance down the column of crops from the COOLPIX S3600 reveals a level of quality that, to be honest, is rather disappointing. In the first crop from close to the left edge of the frame the detail looks coarse and clumpy. The diagonal timbers on the pitched roofs look stepped and blocky and the line that divides the roof ridges from the sky is far from clean and crisp. On a more positive note, there’s no evidence of distortion or colour fringing in this crop, so the lens at least is doing a good job, but the sensor performance is disappointing.
Moving on to the second crop from closer to the middle of the frame, the clumpiness is still very evident. Usually on this crop it’s too much of a challenge for compact sensors to resolve enough detail for you to be able to tell the time on the church clock. On this crop from the COOLPIX S3600 you can only just discern the clock!
Regrettably, it’s the same story on the third and fouth crops with the finer detail all but obscured by the blocky rendering. To be fair, this lack of detail is only likely to be an issue if you’re viewing or printing the COOLPIX S3600’s 20 Megapixel images at close to 100 percent, which could mean an A2 print measuring around 60x42cm or 24×16 inches. All the same, it’s a clear indication of what happens to image quality when you pack this many pixels onto a compact sensor. Having said that, the crops from the Sony W830 also look a little clumpy, but the problem isn’t present to nearly the same degree and there’s visibly more detail in the Sony crops.
To see how these models compare at higher sensitivities check out my Nikon S3600 Noise results.

Nikon COOLPIX S3600		Sony Cyber-shot W830

f3.7, 80 ISO		f3.3, 80 ISO


f3.7, 80 ISO		f3.3, 80 ISO


f3.7, 80 ISO		f3.3, 80 ISO


f3.7, 80 ISO		f3.3, 80 ISO

COOLPIX S3600 vs Sony W830 JPEG noise

To compare noise levels under real-life conditions, I shot this scene with the Nikon COOLPIX S3600 and the Sony Cyber-shot W830 within a few moments of each other using their best quality JPEG settings at each of their ISO sensitivity settings.

Both lenses were set to their maximum 25mm wide angle focal length and the cameras were set to Program Auto exposure mode.

The above shot was taken with the COOLPIX S3600 in Program auto mode. For these tests both cameras were placed on a tripod, stabilisation was disabled on the COOLPIX S3600 but can’t be disabled on the Cyber-shot W830. However, you can turn off Dynamic Range Optimisation on the W830 so I disabled it as it can exaggerate noise. With the sensitivity set to its base 80 ISO the COOLPIX S3600 metered an exposure of 1s at f3.7. The W830, also set to 80 ISO selected 0.6s at f3.3.

As we saw in the outdoor test crops, the base 80 ISO setting on the COOLPIX S3600 is quite noisy. There’s a speckly texture over the entire crop area which is obscuring the finer detail and breaking up the edges. I think there’s also evidence of JPEG compression artifacts in this crop which isn’t helping matters.

The good news is that the 100 ISO crop doesn’t look a lot worse, if anything I’d say it was a slight improvement in some areas. Though there looks to be a little more noise texture on the left of the crop the text on the hymn board is just as clear. The 100 ISO crop also looks slightly more contrasty. At 200 ISO the crop is a little grainier, but I’d have no hesitation in using these three settings more or less interchangeably.

Though the noise gets significantly worse at 400 ISO and the crop looks a bit softer, this is a fairly respectable result that looks good at close to 100 percent viewing sizes. At 800 ISO, though, things take a steep downward turn in terms of quality with clumpy grain and softness combining to eat away at the image detail. And though it looks ok at smaller sizes, the 1600 ISO setting is probably best avoided for all but those must have shots.

The COOLPIX S3600 has a 3200 ISO setting that operates at reduced 4M resolution, so the crop shows a much larger area. The quality isn’t bad and if you can live with the smaller size it’s well worth having. Judging by the 1600 ISO crop, it certainly makes a lot more sense than a full resoution 3200 ISO setting would.

Compared with the crops from the Sony W830 the COOLPIX S3600 crops look noisier and less detailed, at least at the lower end of the sensitivity range. At 80, 100 and 200 ISO the W830 crops are cleaner, with less noise and more detail. At 400 ISO and beyond, though, there’s not much to choose between them. The Sony W830 has the advantage, if that’s the word, of a full resolution 3200 ISO setting, but, as you can see, there’s so much noise you really can’t see very much image detail.

Now head over to my COOLPIX S3600 sample images to see some more real-life shots in a variety of conditions or head straight for my COOLPIX S3600 verdict.