Nikon COOLPIX S1100pj review

Fire up the old projector for home movies

Nikon's follow up to the world's first ultra compact projector comes in the form of the S1100pj. These cameras cannot help but impress people, I mean its a projector in a camera! It may not be the most stylish of compacts on the shelf but it’s the biggest head turner on the market when its in action. It has received a slight makeover but still has the retro look with the bulky plastic body. The major change for this model is the addition of a touchscreen interface and HD video capture. But with a price tag of over £300, are the features worth the extra money?

This really is a camera aimed at beginners and the layout of the camera is very simplistic. 3 physical buttons sit on the back for shooting modes, video recording and playback mode. Projector, power, zoom and shutter controls sit on the top. The rest of the controls are all made available through the new touchscreen interface.

The 3” screen is ample for composing shots and using the on-screen menus. Touchscreen controls are simple to use but some are very close to the edges making them frustrating to use by hand. A stylus is included but is highly impractical for using on the move. There are two slide-out menus, one for flash and macro, and the other for shot settings. On-screen controls rotate with the camera, which is useful.

Shooting is broken down in to 4 modes including 2 automatic modes, scene mode and smart portrait. The Easy auto setting does everything for you, just select an image size and start shooting. Auto gives you flash and focus control while scene mode offers up to 17 preset shooting modes. This is the most advanced setting and you will find yourself using it just to stop the camera lens from focusing and clicking constantly. Smart Portrait offers the usual blink and face detection features as well as smile shutter.

Image quality is ultimately limited by the control over shooting you are given but the images produced are pretty decent. Besides if you are more interested in the projector side then image quality isn't such an issue. Composing shots is simple with the 5x zoom but the increments are huge and a bit temperamental. Touch to focus and shooting is a nice feature and the image stabilisation does a good job of reducing blur. One big drawback of a touch screen camera is that you can’t change settings with gloves on which leaves you shooting in full auto in the colder months.

In playback you can activate the projector in the press of a button, then simply focus and select whatever you wish to view. When in projection mode the remote provided is useful as it alleviates any interface issues. On the base there is a wedge you can eject to tilt the camera for hands free projection. The projector can run for an hour on one charge.

One touch HD video recording is a good feature, especially with the movie light mode to hand for dark shooting situations and projected movie playback available. One big feature of the compact is that it can project directly from a computer screen. This has numerous applications of use from presentations to watching videos from your laptop. It is a shame the projector cannot be powered by mains and that the speaker in the camera isn’t a little louder.

Overall this is simple camera with a very bespoke selling point and a good one at that. If you are travelling a lot and don't have access to a computer or just plain don't like them then this is certainly an option. Being such a unique camera makes it hard to compare but to put it in perspective there are cameras half the price that will offer the same or better image quality. The projector brings the price up too much for it to be just a gimmick.