I own a few nikon dslr's (d200/300/700) and went shopping for a p&S when my spouse's sony dscT1 went bad after 4 years or so.

I went to circuit city and compared all the cameras

My technique was to zoom into the fire alarms located at the I-beams within the building

I didnt use flash and compared the new 13/14mp canon down to a fuzi finepix 20

my price range was 200-400 dollars

my gut was leaning towards the fuji and olympus cameras but the bottom line was the image quality of my test shots. too bad I had to make these decisions using the lcd on the cameras themselves.

to wrap it up, along with the salesmans unwillingly nod of agreement...the nikon had the best image quality with least amount of noise when zoomed in on the final image.


other considerations:

simple...my wife wanted very few buttons and easy to use

didnt pay attention to the auto smile detector or other settings built in...just wanted to point and shoot with good quality.

this camera had like 4 buttons, menu, delete, zoom/wide, and the up/down arrows with center button. EZ

bottom line...simple to use and great image quality

I thought I had done my homework. I couldn't wait to open the box and start taking pictures. From the moment I turned on the camera, I was disappointed. The screen had a yellow tint to it and while it was quick to turn on and ready to take the shot, the time between shots seemed to take forever......even the digital camera I purchased three years ago seemed quicker.

One of the major reasons I purchased this camera was because it boasted of the active child mode. Between the active child mode, the reviews I read, and a number of it's other features, I mistakenly assumed it would have a quick recovery time between shots. I tried to change settings--with the flash, without the flash. I added an SDHC 4 gb memory card. Nothing made a major difference. It was slow. Being a mother of three very active children, I need a camera that can take shots quickly without having to use the burst mode all the time.....this isn't it....

When I downloaded the pictures, I wasn't happy any of the inside shots. Tryng to give the camera the benefit of the doubt, maybe it was the lighting in my home, but most of the inside pictures had the same yellow cast that I saw on the screen. On the plus side, the outside pics I took seemed fine.

Needless to say, within hours of purchasing the CoolPix S610, I was ready to return it. Four days later after giving it a chance, it is packaged back up and will returned tomorrow....even with a restocking fee.

I would not recommend this camera to anyone with children that wants to catch all of those precious moments!