Nikon Coolpix S9300

The Nikon Coolpix S9300 ($349.95 direct) manages to pack a sharp 18x zoom lens into its compact body, but the 16-megapixel camera is slow to start and image quality suffers greatly at even modest ISO settings. It does have a very sharp rear display and a GPS, but you can get those features on more capable cameras. If you're in the market for a compact superzoom, you'd be better served with our Editors' Choice Sony Cyber-shot DSC-HX30V ($419.99, 4 stars), which improves upon the S9300's feature set, without sacrificing image quality.

Design and Features
The S9300 is about the same size and shape as other cameras in the compact superzoom class. At 2.5 by 4.3 by 1.3 inches (HWD) and 7.6 ounces, it's larger than a slim compact with a modest zoom range like the Panasonic Lumix DMC-SZ7 ($199.99, 3 stars), but is just about the same size its Canon counterpart, the PowerShot SX260 HS ($349.99, 4 stars), which measures 2.4 by 4.2 by 1.3 inches and weighs 8.2 ounces.

The 18x zoom lens covers a 25-450mm field of view, which makes it possible to frame wide landscapes, group shots, portraits, and track distant action at its telephoto extreme. It's not the most extreme zoom range that we've seen on a compact camera?that honor goes to the 21x (23-483mm) lens found on the Samsung WB850F ($379.95, 3.5 stars)?but it's unlikely to leave you wanting for a longer or wider lens.

There are a good number of physical controls packed into the rather compact body. A Mode dial lets you toggle quickly between Program mode, numerous Scene modes, Continuous Drive, and various Effects filters. Rear controls let you adjust the Self Timer, Flash, Exposure Compensation, and Macro settings, as well as to start Movie recording. For anything else, you'll need to press Menu and adjust settings via the rear display. The menu itself is a little behind the times. Rather than using an overlay menu that continues to display the Live View feed from the lens like the Fujifilm FinePix F750EXR ($349.95, 3.5 stars), the S9300 has a full screen menu from which you can adjust White Balance, ISO, Autofocus, Metering, and other common shooting settings.

This is a shame, as the 3-inch rear LCD is quite crisp thanks to a 921k-dot resolution. It's sharp enough to support an overlay menu, which gives you the added benefit of being able to see what your camera is seeing as you adjust settings?it's not uncommon to miss a candid moment as you dive through menus. The only camera in this class we've seen with a nicer display is the Samsung WB850F?its 921k-dot screen uses OLED technology rather than LCD, and the result is more lifelike image with punchier contrast and deeper blacks.

The main feature that differentiates the S9300 from its predecessor, the Nikon Coolpix S9100 ($329.95, 4 stars), is its GPS. It connects to the same satellites that are used for GPS navigation devices to add your latitude and longitude coordinates to photos, so you can know exactly where an image was taken. Modern software and web services, including iPhoto, Picasa, and Flickr, go as far as to show your photos on a map based on this embedded data. Impressively, the camera was able to lock on to a signal in under a minute, which is quite impressive. While this feature is new to the S9300, GPS is becoming more and more common in the superzoom class?it's also found in the Canon SX260 HS, Sony HX30V, Samsung WB850F, and Fujifilm FinePix F770EXR ($379.95).

Performance and Conclusions
The S9300 is one of the slower cameras to start and shoot that we've tested as of late?it took a full 3 seconds from hitting the power button to capturing a shot. It does a little bit better in terms of shutter lag, managing a 0.3-second delay between pressing the shutter and taking a photo. It does excel in burst shooting?the camera can grab a burst of 7 shots in just over a second, but requires 6 seconds to write them all to memory. If you need to shoot a longer burst, the camera can slow things down to about 0.7 second between each photo, keeping that pace for 33 shots before stopping. It only takes about 4.5 seconds to recover from this longer burst shooting, as files are being written to the memory card as you shoot.

I used Imatest to check the sharpness of images captured by the S9300's 18x zoom lens. It scored 2,002 lines per picture height, which is a bit better than the 1,800 lines required for a sharp image. It may not be the sharpest compact superzoom that we've tested?that would be the Samsung WB850F, which notched 2,377 lines on the same test?but it's sufficient for larger prints, and more than sufficient for web sharing.

Where the S9300 fails is at higher ISO settings. At its base ISO 125 it's a killer camera, but by the time you set it to a rather middling setting of ISO 400, image detail starts to vanish. At ISO 800 and above, photos lack any sort of fine detail. Looking at the Imatest noise score on its own would tell a different story?it says that photos have less than 1.5 percent noise through the top ISO 3200 setting. It looks as if the S9300 is digitally erasing noise, and along with it fine detail, in order to keep its images from appearing too grainy. Despite not getting as good as a test score, your best option for high ISO performance in this class is the Canon PowerShot SX260 HS?it keeps noise below 1.5 percent through ISO 800. If you need to push it higher than that you do lose detail, but ISO 1600 photos from the SX260 HS capture more detail than ISO 400 images from the S9300.

You can use the camera to grab video at 1080p30 or 720p30 resolution in QuickTime format. The video quality itself is a little underwhelming?it's not as crisp or detailed as in other top-end point-and-shoots. You can zoom and focus when recording, but the sound of the lens moving in and out is quite audible on the soundtrack. The only ports you'll find on the body are a mini HDMI connector and a proprietary USB port. The latter doubles as the charging port?there is no dedicated battery charger included?you'll need to plug the S9300 into the wall in order to replenish its battery. Standard SD, SDHC, and SDXC memory cards are supported.

Given its price and pedigree, the Nikon Coolpix S9300 is a resounding disappointment. The previous-generation 12-megapixel S9100 tested very well, but S9300's image quality at higher ISO suffers, which calls into question the decision to pack an additional four million pixels into already small imaging sensor. If you're in the market for a long zoom camera with GPS, the Canon PowerShot SX260 HS is a much better choice in terms of image quality and performance?and it's the same price. If you're willing to spend a bit more, consider our Editors' Choice Sony Cyber-shot DSC-HX30V, a Wi-Fi enabled camera that also sports a sharp zoom lens, GPS, and delivers good high ISO performance.

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