Nikon Coolpix S8000 Digital Camera Review

The Nikon Coolpix S8000 small and compact digital camera offer a whole lot of features considering it’s size and price.  With a suggested retail price of $299, it’s still a deal of a digital camera,but with discounts you can buy the Nikon S8000 for much less than the ‘suggested price’ might be.

But enough about the Nikon S8000 price, what makes or breaks a digital camera is it’s feature set and the Nikon S8000 is no slouch. Offering 14 megapixels (actually, 14.2) and a 10x optical zoom lens and 3 inch LCD you’d think that would be enough features right there to command the $250 street price (approx) of the Nikon S8000.

But Nikon has filled the Coolpix S8000 with a lot more features than just a digital camera with a high megapixel count and a 10x zoom lens. Although those are a great start, and  without these the Nikon S8000 would easily be passed over for a much higher digital camera, or even a small digital SLR camera such as the Nikon D5000.

Big Prints. That’s the first thing that comes to mind why I might choose to buy the Nikon S8000 over a lesser digita camera such as the entry level Nikon Coolpix L22  (another great camera from Nikon) is the fact that the Nikon S8000 can print up to 20 inches by 30 inches with ease from it’s 14.2 megapixels of resolution. You can shoot knowing that the Nikon Coolpix S8000 is no slouch when it comes to handling  poster sized print sizes.

HD Movie Recording.

This is becoming a pretty standard feature on most small and compact digital cameras, especially in this price range of $300. 720p HD video recording comes as a standard feature on the Nikon Coolpix S8000 digital camera and it offers movie like recording at a full 30 frames per second and also includes  HDMI output  so you can connect the Nikon S8000 to a TV or monitor and share your movies with your friends, or share them on facebook, you tube or other favorite video sharing sites.

Bright Lens with Bright LCD display

It would be easy to gloss over these two features and there’s certainly other digital cameras that offer more zoom range, but the Nikon S8000 differentiates itself, even if the 10x zoom ratio isn’t as big a stretch as other digital cameras. Firstly, the Nikon S8000 offers a smaller footprint than the higher zoom digital cameras, as they mostly are considered bridge cameras and as such are more shaped like small dslr cameras. And secondly, the zoom lens on the Nikon S8000 offers high quality ED Nikkor glass that results in sharp and clear photos. If I had to choose any  part of the digital camera not to scrimp on, it would be the lens.  A good digital camera can be ruined by a cheap lens.

Lastly , the 3 inch LCD display  is a good size, but is also a high resolution lcd screen with more than 900,000 dots for bright and crisp digital displays that look good in any light, allowing you to easily compose and shoot your favorite  photos on the  Nikon S8000.

The Nikon S8000 is not the cheapest digital camera, but it offers both high resolution movie and still photography with a 10x zoom lens that includes high quality ED Nikon Glass not found on lesser nikon compact cameras and also inludes a nice bright 3 inch LCD display.

As I mentioned earlier, the price on the Nikon S8000 is suggested at $299 but I have found the best price on the Nikon S8000 to be at Amazon, but you might want to check Ritz, B+H, and Adorama as they have been known to offer Nikon S8000 deals from time to time too.