When my old digital camera starting turning itself off whenever it wanted to,I decided it was time to get a new one.  I had had the old one since 2003–it was a decent camera but it had its problems.  The zoom feature has always been lacking, and I never could get the colors to come out looking like the real thing, especially yellows and purples.

As a food blogger, I wanted a camera capable of taking good, clear close-ups.  And as a person who lives fulltime in an RV, I wanted to be able to take good shots of the scenery, both regular and zoom. I found those features in my new camera, the  Nikon Coolpix S630.   The S630 is 12 megapixles, with 7X optical zoom, ISO 6400, and a 2.7 inch LCD display. It has 44 mb of photo storage built in, enough for about 55 medium sized photos.  Memory is expandable using an SD card.

Included with the camera is a rechargeable li-ion battery and the charger for it; a USB cable; and  an audio video cable so you can play your movies on a TV directly from the camera.  There are way more functions than I may ever use, but it was very easy to learn to use them.

One of the first things I did was go out into  my world and try out different settings. I am especially pleased with the macro:

I had to lay down on the ground to get this shot, but you can clearly see the gills in this mushroom.  Next, I walked down the road to the lake where my husband was fishing. The first photo was taken with no zoom. You can barely see him over there:

The next one was taken at full zoom, which produced a somewhat blurred picture, but it does demonstrate how powerful the zoom function can be:

I wanted to check was how true to color my pictures would be of things that are yellow. You’ll just have to take my word for it that this fabric is really this color:

My last test was the “Food” pre-set feature. Those noodles look pretty good:

When I bought this camera in November 2009, I paid $229 for it. I also bought a 4 GB SD card, and an extra battery. If you are someone who only occasionally takes pictures, you should be fine with just one battery. I use my camera every day, and take lots of pictures. My battery usually lasts more than a week before needing to be recharged.  The battery costs $39, but for me it was worth that, as I was spending about $10 a week for AA batteries for my old camera.

In my opinion, the  Nikon Coolpix S630 is a very good camera for the amateur photographer.

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Tagged as: digital camera, gadgets, gifts, photography