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Purchasing or considering Canon Coolpix S3000? Read this…

In this article you'll find some things you may need to consider before buying Canon Coolpix S3000 digital camera. I was using it for some longer time and it was very disappointing in certain areas. I wouldn't suggest purchasing it to anyone.

Here is, what I have found:

1. Don't you even, never buy this camera, if you want to make shots anywhere inside. You have only two options: either you use flash (which makes colors completely not natural and still does not guarantee good quality of photos) or without it, photos will be shot in so incredibly long time, that they'll always be blured, smudged etc. You have absolutely no option to control that. Whenever you turn off flash, exposure time rises to abnormal length, making shots nearly impossible of with fatal quality, no mater which program you choose. Yes, this camera makes really good photos outside. Full of colors, with perfect quality etc. But inside -- it simply fails completely.

2. This is the only device known to me, that must be turned on to be charged. If you simply connect it to power socket, but forget to press On/Off switch, it won't be charged up! To make things even more idiotic, note, that you don't have to put On/Off switch, when connecting to USB port (sic!) only to wall. If you plug it to USB, it will start charging itself immediately. Some people thinks, that this is small problem. Well, if you end up few times with completely useless (discharged) camera, when you really need it, simply because you forgot to press On/Off button after plugging power cord, you may start thinking that this is not a small problem.

3. You can't access camera contents (after you plug it to your computer via USB) as regular USB share (disk) only in group of scanners or other optic devices. I don't know, if this is caused by camera itself or default, system driver, but I do know, that this is little bit annoying (can't use Total Commander, which I personally love, for example). And this might also be reason, why you can't use quick USB copy of camera content in devices that supports this feature (some NAS server etc.).

4. Camera hasn't got any auto-orientation mode, so whenever you make portrait photos, you have to manually rotate them 90 degrees clockwise or anti-clockwise, after you get them to your computer.

5. When recording movies, Coolpix S3000 writes AVIs with no compression at all or with a very poor codec. Using any standard video editing software to re-compress all movies to DivX or XviD gives you usually 5-7x smaller output files!

It seems, that now you have a bit brighter picture of this digital camera.

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