Nikon Coolpix S550 10 MP Digital Camera with 5x Optical Zoom (Graphite Black)

This camera is amazing! Tons of shooting options and 5X zoom! Pictures have great detail and macro mode is phenomenal! All this fits into your pocket in a stylish point and shoot. Highly recommended!

I have been a HUGE fan of Nikon cameras over the years, especially their digital line. I bought their first DLSR and that has served me well.

I bought the S550 for my wife so she'd have something small to put in her purse. She was out of town recently and came back with a ton of pictures, almost all of which were somewhat grainy or blurry. I thought it must be the diminutive camera size and that my wife might've been experiencing a slight bit of camera shake (the S550 is a bit tricky to hold completely steady and compose a picture). But camera shake would explain blur, but not grainy.

Well, I took the camera and took shots of this and that and then compared it to my Canon Powershot A610 (5 Megapixels). I took shots of the same items with both cameras and was...well...shocked! The clarity on the A610 was significantly better.

Wish I had performed this experiment when I first purchased the camera. Would've returned it.

Why did I give it 2 stars instead of 1? Well, it's cute, 5X optical is a great feature, it's got video and it fits in my shirt pocket. But add 'em all up and they pale when picture quality suffers.

I bought this camera because I had a Nikon film camera I paid nothing for in 1990 and it took incredible pictures. I have always admired Nikon lenses.

Has no one else experienced the MIRROR that the LCD screen becomes in bright sunlight? My other digital camera "grays out" in bright sun but this one is a MIRROR....there is no way to even guess at what you are pointing the lens at. A viewfinder would not just be for nostalgia, it would be USEFUL for this camera.

I bought this camera assuming the detailed description of included features was accurate but it isn't- at least in one regard which was the selling point for me: the 'stop-motion movie' mode which it lists in the final paragraph description.
This was the one I spotted, but there could be others. For this, and all other cameras and electronic equipment listed on Amazon I will be double-checking the manufacturers website in the future.
In this case, here's the link to Nikon's own page on the S550:
http://www.nikonusa.com/Find-Your-Nikon/Product/Digital-Camera/26108/COOLPIX-S550.html

This Nikon product looks cool but only from outside. The image quality is really poor for a 10MP resolution. My 4 MP Fuji takes way better pics.

Day and night mode are equally bad. I will not recommend this to anyone.