Nikon COOLPIX S9100

14th December 2011

Written by Gordon Laing

Quality

Nikon COOLPIX S9100 vs Canon PowerShot SX230 HS vs Panasonic Lumix TZ20 / ZS10 Resolution

To compare real-life performance when zoomed-out, we shot this scene with the Nikon Coolpix S9100, Canon PowerShot SX230 HS and Panasonic Lumix TZ20 / ZS10 within a few moments of each other using their best quality JPEG settings.

The lenses on each camera were set to approximately the same field of view and all three cameras were set to Program auto exposure mode.

The ISO sensitivity was manually set to the lowest available setting 160 ISO – on the COOLPIX S9100 and 100 ISO on the PowerShot SX230 HS and Lumix TZ20 / ZS10.

	Nikon COOLPIX S9100
1	Nikon COOLPIX S9100 Resolution
2	Nikon COOLPIX S9100 Noise
3	Nikon COOLPIX S9100 Sample images

The image above was taken with the Nikon COOLPIX S9100 with its lens zoomed to 5.1mm (29mm equivalent), just inside its maximum wide angle setting of 4.5mm (25mm equivalent), to provide a comparable field of view with the Canon PowerShot SX230 HS. The camera metered 1/640 at f7.2 and 160 ISO. The original image file was 4.64MB. The crops are taken from the areas marked with red rectangles and presented here at 100%.

Overall it’s quite a nice result from the COOLPIX S9100. The shot is well exposed, there’s plenty of detail throughout the tonal range and the colours and white balance are good. What about the detailed view in the crops? The first crop looks a little noisy, the sky has a slight texture to it and the graininess is also apparent in the detail on the chapel walls. The noisiness is also affecting edge detail in this crop; the horizon where the chapel wall meets the skyline is not very well defined and the same is true of the sea/sky horizon from edge to edge.

In the second crop, the lighthouse and cliffs are quite clearly picked out and you can see a reasonable amount of detail in these distant features but, once again, the edge detail in the windows and roofs of the houses in the foreground is quite soft. In the third crop taken from close to the frame edge there looks to be a little bit of colour fringing, but it’s slight and wasn’t repeated anywhere else in the image. The Nikkor ED glass lens in the COOLPIX S9100 is doing an excellent job, but it doesn’t produce entirely consistent results across the frame as the centre crop with its improved edge definition demonstrates.

It’s worth pointing out that these blemishes will have negligible effect on image quality when viewing images at less than 100 percent and it’s only if you’re making big prints that they are likely to become an issue.

Compared with the PowerShot SX230 HS the COOLPIX S9100 crops don’t look as good. The PowerShot SX230 HS crops have a marginal edge in several areas which adds up to a clear overall quality advantage. Both of these models have 12.1 Megapixel back-illuminated CMOS sensors, but the PowerShot SX230 HS is either generating less noise or handling it better, possibly both. Whichever it is, you can see clearer sharper, better defined detail in the SX230 HS crops.

Compared with the Panasonic Lumix TZ20 /ZS10 the Nikon COOLPIX S9100 crops look to be marginally better. Both cameras suffer from the same problems, sensor noise and fallout from the processing that attempts to deal with it. But there are differences both in the nature of the noise and the degree of the problem. The fact that the Lumix TZ20 / ZS10 has a higher resolution 14.1 Megapixel sensor works both for and against it. The image detail is bigger and easier to make out, but there’s also more noise. If that were all, things might balance out, but the Lumix TZ20 / ZS10 crops have a processed clumpiness about them that is, well, just really unpleasant to look at. You can see it at its worst in the middle band of the lighthouse crop, look at the boundaries between the sea, cliffs and sky and the detail within those areas.

Now let’s see how they compare at higher sensitivities in our High ISO Noise results.

Nikon COOLPIX S9100	Canon PowerShot SX230 HS	Panasonic Lumix TZ20

f7.2, 100 ISO	f4 100 ISO	f4, 100 ISO


f7.2, 100 ISO	f4 100 ISO	f4, 100 ISO


f7.2, 100 ISO	f4 100 ISO	f4, 100 ISO


f7.2, 100 ISO	f4 100 ISO	f4, 100 ISO

Nikon COOLPIX S9100 results : Real-life resolution / High ISO Noise

Nikon COOLPIX S9100 vs Canon PowerShot SX230 HS vs Panasonic Lumix TZ20 / ZS10 Noise

	Nikon COOLPIX S9100 results
1	COOLPIX S9100 Resolution
2	COOLPIX S9100 Noise
3	COOLPIX S9100 Sample images

To compare noise levels under real-life conditions we shot this scene with the Nikon COOLPIX S9100, Canon PowerShot SX230 HS, and Panasonic Lumix TZ20 / ZS10 within a few moments of each other using their best quality JPEG settings at each of their ISO sensitivity settings.

All three cameras were set to Program auto exposure mode and the lenses were set to approximately the same field of view, around 5mm to match the PowerShot SX230 HS. The ISO sensitivity was set manually.

The above shot was taken with the the Nikon COOLPIX S9100 in Program auto mode. The lens was zoomed in slightly to 5.1mm (29mm equivalent), the sensitivity was set to 160 ISO and the exposure was 1/3 at f3.6. The crops are taken from the area marked with the red square and presented below at 100%.

Starting a little off-topic, the COOLPIX S9100’s white balance for these interior low-light shots is a lot warmer than I’m used to seeing, though it’s not unpleasant and I actually prefer it to the slightly cool setting more commonly chosen. Looking at the first of the crops, at 160 ISO the COOLPIX S9100 result is not at all bad, it’s a little soft, but the overall level of detail is good. Moving up to 200 ISO there’s very little difference. The 200 ISO crop is marginally noisier but, even looking closely at these 100 percent crops, there’s not much in it. Of course, moving from 160 to 200 ISO isn’t going to gain you much in terms of exposure either.

At 400 ISO you can see a very definite change in the degree of noise and the level of detail in the crop. But although the flat areas are looking much grainier, you can still make out most of the detail in the stone column and the vertical grooves in the wood panelling. There’s a similar change from 400 to 800 ISO. The noise now is pervasive but, although it’s getting in the way of detail, the image doesn’t look unpleasantly processed, there’s an ‘organic’ look to the noise, a little like film grain, which seems visually more acceptable.

At 1600 and 3200 ISO the detail is breaking up quite badly, but I’d rather get a shot with this kind of noise than none at all. And noisy, though they are, these crops aren’t beset by other problems, the white balance is still good (still warm) and the exposure is accurate. The COOLPIX S9100’s Night Landscape mode, used handheld, has underexposed the scene slightly though. Despite that, at the automatically selected 400 ISO sensitivity it has produced a result that compares well with the single-shot crops in terms of image detail and is definitely well worth considering as an alternative to a 1600 or 3200 ISO shot.

Compared with the Canon PowerShot SX230 HS the COOLPIX S9100 gets off to a great start. It can’t quite match the PowerShot SX230 HS at 100 ISO for clarity and fine detail resolution, but it’s not far off. Step up to 200 ISO and it’s still a close run thing, but again the SX230 HS manages to hang on to that little bit more detail that’s lost in softness on the COOLPIX S9100 crops. It’s much the same story right the way up the sensitivity range, with the Canon PowerShot SX230 HS crops a little grainier than those from the COOLPIX S9100, but also showing more detail.

As in the real world resolution crops, where the COOLPIX S9100 lags just a little bit behind the PowerShot SX230 HS, it does better than the Lumix TZ20 / ZS10. It’s the tendency for the Lumix TZ20 / ZS10 processing to cause pixel clumping and compromise image detail that gives the COOLPIX S9100 the edge, even with its base 160 ISO setting competing against the Lumix TZ20 / ZS10’s 100 ISO. The S9100 widens the gap the further up the sensitivity range you go, so much so that the S9100’s 800 ISO crop looks better then the TZ20 / ZS10’s 400 ISO crop. The TZ20 / ZS10’s lack of a 3200 ISO setting is no real drawback given that all three models have a low-light composite mode. The Lumix TZ20 /ZS10’s Handheld Night Shot crop set the same 400 ISO sensitivity as Night Landscape mode on the COOLPIX S9100. The resulting Lumix crop looks softer with less detail than that from the COOLPIX S910, but the exposure is a lot better.

Now head over to our Nikon COOLPIX S9100 sample images to see some more real-life shots in a variety of conditions.

Nikon COOLPIX S9100	Canon PowerShot SX230 HS	Panasonic Lumix TZ20

160 ISO	100 ISO	100 ISO


200 ISO	200 ISO	200 ISO


400 ISO	400 ISO	400 ISO


800 ISO	800 ISO	800 ISO


1600 ISO	1600 ISO	1600 ISO


3200 ISO	3200 ISO	Hi Sens 2000 ISO


Night Landscape 400 ISO	Handheld Night Scene 800 ISO	Handheld Night Shot 400 ISO