Nikon COOLPIX S6500 Wi-Fi Digital Camera with 12x Zoom (Red)

I bought this camera to have one I could slide in a shirt pocket. I have a D90 Nikon and just didn't want to lug it with me on a trip I was taking. I like Nikon quality and this camera had all the features id expect from a good camera. The 12x zoom is one of the features that i was wanting. Since returning from my trip and using the camera i can say i picked the right one. The quality of pics are outstanding, the ease of use, the compactness makes this a very nice camera to have handy. I take it with me now everywhere i go. I grab for it now instead of my phone, although my phone takes nice pics it doesn't have the zoom ability that the S6500 has and that is mostly the plus for this little camera. I gave it a five star because it roamed across Europe with me for a week and never missed a beat. I got a good one. Thanks Amazon! Your prices are the best too.

I bought the Nikon COOLPIX S6500 for a recently completed trip to Europe. It performed exactly as I expected. I have a Canon EOS Rebel but didn't want to lug around that big of a camera since this was a bus tour of multiple countries and I want to travel as light as possible. I kept the camera in my pocket and discovered if you put a couple heavy-duty rubber bands on it it's easy to grab and won't slide out of your pocket. (That also helps foil Europe's ever-present pick pockets...) Other reviews have noted that they were annoyed because after every shot the Quick Effects screen precludes a quick second picture. If you SLIGHTLY depress the trigger button when the Quick Effects screen appears it will disappear just as quickly, enabling a relatively fast second shot. My only issue with the camera was the relatively short battery life, but that's solved by having a second/backup battery. Now, if I can just remember to carry the backup battery with me -- rather than leaving it on the bus as I did on three occasions -- I would have had no issues at all. But that problem certainly wasn't the camera/batteries fault. It's an excellent lightweight travel camera that takes amazingly good pictures.

Good Value in a very Small Handy Point and Shoot Compared to other cameras, the Sony WX-350 delivers in a few remarkable areas: very small size and light weight, and extremely good battery life. That will be enough to please many, although in all other respects the WX-350 is just average. In terms of shooting performance, the Fuji F850 and the Panasonic ZS-15 are noticeably faster, while the similarly sized Nikon S6500 is the slow-poke of the bunch. As is common with small digital cameras, the lenses are not particularly bright. The Sony starts out at f/3.5, closing down to f6.5 at full zoom. The ZS-15 goes from f/3.3 - f5.9, the Nikon from f/3.1-6.5, and the Fuji from f/3.5-5.3. As primarily a still camera, the Fuji is my pick of the litter, particularly when shooting in its "M" mode, or 8 meg mode, which allows the EXR processor to do its thing. For video, though, its battery life isn't good enough to be of much cold weather field use, as is the case with the Nikon S6500. The Fuji also has the most visible, enjoyable LCD, the Panasonic having the weakest, which the only thing that I could consider a flaw of sorts with the ZS-15. Still, the Panasonic focuses faster than the WX-350, is better in low light (none of these cameras are great in that regard), and the Panasonic has the full PASM set of controls to work with. Though the Panasonic's battery life is not superb for video (260 CIPA still shot rating) by dimming the LCD as much as possible and going with higher capacity (1200 mAH vs. 895 mAH OEM) aftermarket batteries, I've been able to squeeze out over an hour and fifteen minutes of video capture between battery changes. While the WX-350 delivers on lightness, low-bulk, and very impressive battery life, the rest of the camera is just wonderfully adequate, and not good enough to best the Fuji F850EXR as a 20x travel zoom, nor good enough to beat the older Panasonic 16x ZS-15 in terms of speedy shooting performance, video, or general still image quality. What of the Nikon COOLPIX S6500? Well, for the money ($100 or so as of this writing), it is an excellent value. It is very small, easy to use, and sells for about half of the similar form-factor longer-zoom WX-350 Sony, with a better LCD. While its shooting performance is not blazing fast, its battery life is adequate for stills but not for video. With good optical stabilization and a very useable 12x zoom range, it is the type of camera that you can take anywhere without much bulk or weight. It isn't class-leading, by any means, but it also doesn't have a class-leading price, either. For the dollar in a handy little point and shoot, it is quite a satisfying and fun little camera. Copyright 2014 by Randy Wakeman. All Rights Reserved.

ORIGINAL: This is only my second outing with this camera and I am severely disappointed. It takes pictures fine, but when I click to view my pictures, the camera freezes and the screen goes black. The lenses stays out, and the camera won't respond to anything until I remove the battery and restart it. Don't have my laptop on vacation with me so I'm not even sure if the pictures are being saved yet. Guess I'll be using my phone camera after all. UPDATED: Although I had used my camera before with no issue, and although my memory card works just fine on my fugi waterproof camera, my problem was resolved by replacing the memory card. I have not had another problem since switching the cards. I upgraded the rating from one star to four stars. I am still upset that I had this issue to begin with. Pictures turn out fine. I don't like the fact that the camera prompts me turn off silent mode when I turn on the flash. I do like the color of the camera. Pictures turn out fine, nothing spectacular but does the job.

I purchased this camera from previous familiarity and satisfaction with Nikon products. After recently deciding how useful one of these small cameras would be for my work purposes I decided to buy one of the Coolpix cameras. This in itself is quite a chore as Nikon seems to have endless models of this camera. I decided to get a fairly inexpensive one since it was going to be used a lot out in the field. This one was available through Beach Camera for a great deal on a refurbished model. The camera looks and performs like new, in fact I have been using this camera now for about two months and the battery charge is still nearly full after 100's of photos. The picture quality turns out quite well also, with the photos being clear. I would recommend this camera for anyone that needs a compact camera that has decent capabilities and takes quality photos and has a very reasonable price tag.

A really good camera works great everything is in good condition

This camera is the best point and shoot made and I was disappointed that Nikon discontinued it. Fortunately it is still available on Amazon. I have had three of these cameras and all were stolen. The newer versions of this camera just don't hold up to this one. Images are phenomenally detailed and clear. In movie mode, the images are crystal clear, even in the night time street scenes and the sound quality is surprisingly good. To give you an example; I have shot pictures of the moon(in zoom mode) with this camera and was surprised to find the photo sharp and so detailed that every crater on the moon was photographed in terrific detail. I find that this is a camera I cannot do without. For the money, you just can't beat it, really ! I have this year's model and it is just not as good; it just isn't. I intend to buy a second, as a backup. I can't let this go by while they are still available. By the way, originally, when it was new, in stores, I had paid nearly 250 dollars.

Problems: Lots of out of focus photos in strong daylight (with half pressing shutter button, getting focus confirmation beeps, and seeing green brackets displayed). Auto HDR feature delivered very, very, very weak results, like overexposed pastel gray versions of regular non-HDR photos. Auto HDR photos had less dynamic range than regular photos. Lots of camera shake in strong daylight. Digital zoom was turned off, but I saw blocky edges on objects in 8 megapixel photos at less than full optical zoom. The blocky effect was probably from Nikon's choice to overcompress JPEGs. Self timer automatically turned itself off after being used, so I had to manually turn it back on over and over and over. Wind noise reduction did not work at all. Audio had loud pops and clicks that did not correspond to real world sound waves. Tiny, recessed power button often had to be pressed more than once to turn on the camera. There was no low saturation option, so it was impossible to photograph day-glo subjects. They had clipped highlights at EV -2.0. Glamour retouching produced bizarre results with way too much skin smoothing. Battery door impeded access to SD card, making it quite difficult to remove with door unable to swing open more than 90 degrees. USB port door impeded access, making it quite awkward and difficult to plug in the cord. Did not work with a Linux PC. Had to use a card reader, meaning I had to deal with the frustrating battery door too often. Camera rotated photos that didn't need rotation, with no option to disable auto rotation. Cumbersome interface with lots of submenus and the need to confirm, rather than simply choose options. Video start / stop button was recessed and difficult to operate. Buttons failed to respond for several seconds after camera appeared to be on and ready. EV reverted to 0 in most modes after powering down and up. Pop, Toy Camera, Cross Process, and Soft Focus modes produced hideously ugly photos. Nikon used a read only file system for SD card, making it impossible to reformat an 8 GB card in Linux. Upon checking to fix errors, the disk utility in Linux said the file system was not clean. Had to use another digital camera to reformat. Felt lied to. Felt tricked. Felt regret. Lost faith in ability of English language to convey true information. Lost faith in technological progress. Good points: Very pretty paint job. The metallic orange was lovely. The screen was OK. I liked having the tic tac toe grid overlay option to help align photos with horizons and vertical subjects. Product was superficially attractive. A lot of thought and care went into its surface appearance (and marketing). Interface and buttons were responsive. Macros were appealing when cropped from 16 megapixel originals. This product turned me from a Nikon admirer to a Nikon hater. I don't understand why a manufacturer would make products this awful, then put their company name on them. I wish the engineers simply made the basic functions of still photography fast and easy and left the gimmicky and disappointing extra features for third party software creators to worry about. I wish digital cameras just had 5 or 10 settings that stayed where the photographer left them. It's no fun remembering whether or not a certain feature switches itself off and on depending on what other features cluttering up the system are in use. The S6500 takes commands, makes one photo, then undoes the commands on the condescending presumption that users making camera adjustments don't know what they're doing. I'd rather take pictures in a creative flow with a passive camera, not have to fight and struggle repeatedly for influence over machines supposedly meant to augment human capabilities. What a waste of money.