This is a review of the new Nikon S7c 7 megapixel digital camera. Let me say off the bat that the coolest thing about this camera is that it is wi-fi capable and comes with a free 1-year subscription to T-Mobile so you can send pictures without a computer from any Starbucks, airport lounge, or in fact, any open wi-fi hotspot.

Furthermore, we now have full support for receiving S7c pictures directly into Tabblo so if you want to tabblo on the go, this is the camera for you!

Read on for more...

The Good

I've had quite a few compact digital cameras from all of the major vendors you see here and I have to say that the S7c holds its own against all of these guys. It's light but feels durable, its menu system is intuitive and easy to navigate, and best of all, it has all of the features you expect to find in an advanced compact shooter at a really good price ($350) including high ISOs, 7MP, nice battery life, and all sorts of picture taking presets and custom options.

And to boot, with this camera Nikon seems to be willing to recognize that a computer powers it and that, as such, the camera should stop aping analog cameras and do some fancy stuff. Leaving the wi-fi aside for a moment, this means features like a portrait mode that uses the CPU to find the face in the image area and focuses/exposes for it (even worked on a dog), electronic image stabilization, and a mode called BSS which basically takes several exposures on one shutter release and keeps the "best" one.

In short, these guys are trying to innovate, and I for one am ready for it.

Size-wise, you can see from these pictures that the camera is a little larger than its Canon and Sony equivalents though it is also a little bit skinnier. Overall it is very similar in dimensions to a deck of playing cards. One other thing to keep in mind is that the lens does not come out (as it does on the Canons) which makes for some adjustment if you are used to that mode of operation.

The bad

My biggest gripe with the S7c is that the time to actually take a picture after you press the shutter reminds me of cameras 1+ years old and not the current state of the art in the compact category. It is noticeably slower than my Canon SD700 and when taking pictures of fast moving subjects (i.e., little kids) this can cause for missed opportunities. I did not get to try the "sports" mode which may help alleviate some of these issues but I generally don't like presets.

My second big gripe is that the camera does not have an optical viewfinder. The display is really amazing– 3 inches and really bright even in direct sunlight but I generally try to stay away from cameras that don't also give you an optical path to framing your shot.

Other lesser issues include the fact that this is a "dock-included" camera with  one of those clunky dock things and a weird connector. This means that if you want to unload the camera you need to either carry the dock or a memory card reader. I imagine with all of the cameras that now seem to come with docks that most users like these– but to me, they are just unnecessary clutter.

The Super Cool

Ok, ok, the moment all of the geeks in the crowd have been waiting for: thoughts on the wi-fi capabilities of the S7c. First off, let me say that I've been watching wi-fi equipped cameras for a while now, and it wasn't until the S7c (and more specifically Katie's review in the Wall Street Journal) that I decided to take the plunge. So this little camera had a high bar to clear with me.

And it has done so quite nicely. Think of the S7c as a wi-fi sniffer with a  lens. You just rotate that cool iPod-like wheel thing to the antenna option and off it goes in search of all available access points. Though the PC software that comes with it allows you to configure a closed network, I eschewed all of that and just went around the neighborhood trying to find patches of ether for the camera to find. It takes about 15-25 seconds to scan and find all access points that are open but does not associate or connect until later in the process when you send the pictures (a great tradeoff in my opinion). The one annoying thing is that if it doesn't find an access point, the next thing it tries for is a wireless printer and the interface seems to be incredibly single-threaded when it comes to all things network related– that is, it is almost impossible to interrupt a running scan (even by turning the camera off) so you are stuck waiting. The other slightly annoying thing about the wi-fi transfer is that you can not send 7MP images out but are instead limited to a 12XX x 10XX sized image (called "PC quality"). This means that you can't just upload and forget the PC transfer altogether unless you don't mind ending up with 2MP images. In this post PC world, I really hope that Nikon sees fit to fix that in all later models, or even in a firmware update. Let me be free of the PC S7c!

Overall you will not be disappointed with the S7c's wi-fi capabilities– in fact you will often be amazed at how much "computer" there is in this camera. And, as bonus, did you know you can now use Tabblo to receive all of your S7c's pictures directly? (read below for more on that)

For More Info

What kind of a bozo does a camera review online and doesn't include sample images? Not this one. So make sure to check out this tabblo of outdoor fall photos taken exclusively with the S7c. Or this one with some indoor flash photos as well. Rather than talking about chromatic aberration, white balance, lens barreling, etc., I figured I would just let you see for yourselves.

[ A brief note on me and my perspective: as I said, I've had quite a view compact and subcompact cameras and thus far my consistent favorites are the Canon SDs. However, my real camera is a Nikon D70 and I generally tend to like the overall usability of the Nikons DSLRs better (I know that I am in the minority here). I am by no means a professional photographer though I've collected 45K digital pictures since December of 1997 when I got my first digital camera and have faced a lot of the same pains that anyone who has grown up with this industry has. ]

Finally, for those interested in the Nikon-Tabblo connection, go and read this blog post. It is not official nor is it sanctioned by Nikon (since we don't know anyone there) but I suspect that they probably wouldn't mind given how positive I feel about their newest hacker friendly camera. We will continue supporting S7c auto-tabblo importing unless told to stop, and we're also going to do one other thing:

Starting today, we're making the prize for the Moving contest be an S7c. So if you make the winning tabblo for October's theme ("moving"), you'll get a nice S7c along with any and all customer support you want and or need from me. To find out more about this, go and check out the moving contest page.

[ All of the pictures and content on this tabblo are by me and under a CC license that lets you do whatever you want with them so long as you have proper attribution ]