Nikon Coolpix S50c

Nikon’s Coolpix S50c arrived in 2007 as the company’s most connected compact — a wave-surface metal body with built-in IEEE 802.11b/g WiFi that could send photos straight from the camera to a computer or upload them to Nikon’s Coolpix Connect cloud service for email sharing and remote storage. The „c“ stood for connectivity, and the implementation was genuinely thoughtful for the era: automatic network detection, an in-camera address book, and a cloud service that let you back up an entire shoot wirelessly before leaving the location. The same camera without the antenna sold for £40 less. The wave-surface industrial design — launched with Kate Moss ads, to be clear about the target audience — made the whole thing feel like a luxury object.

THE LOOKS

The S50c is available in Gloss Silver only, and it wears the finish well. Smooth curves flow across the all-metal body, with a chrome antenna bulge on one side that’s the only tell for the WiFi hardware inside. The 3-inch LCD dominates the back, leaving a minimal cluster of controls that are small but precisely placed. The grip sits on the thin side rather than the bulge, which gives the camera a slight tendency to feel like it’s leaning away from your hand — a minor ergonomic trade-off for a genuinely striking silhouette.

THE SPECS

7.2-megapixel 1/2.5-inch CCD sensor, ISO 100–1600. Zoom-Nikkor ED 3× optical zoom, 38–114mm equivalent, VR optical image stabilization. 3-inch TFT LCD (230k dots), 170-degree viewing angle. Face-Priority AF, D-Lighting, automatic red-eye fix, Best Shot Selector. 15 scene modes. QuickTime video with sound at 30fps. IEEE 802.11b/g WiFi — Coolpix Connect 2 service for cloud storage, email transfer, and direct-to-computer wireless transfer via dedicated software. SD/SDHC storage plus 13MB internal memory.

DESIGN HIGHLIGHTS

• All-metal wave-surface body with chrome WiFi bulge: The smooth curves and metallic finish made this one of the more genuinely premium-looking compacts of 2007 — the antenna housing reads as a design feature rather than an afterthought.
• 3-inch LCD with 170-degree viewing angle: Unusually wide even by later standards — the screen stayed readable from almost any angle, making it practical for sharing images in a group without passing the camera around.
• Dual-mode WiFi: cloud and direct transfer: Coolpix Connect 2 handled both remote cloud uploads and direct wireless transfers to a computer, making it more versatile than most proprietary WiFi implementations of the era.

THE VERDICT

The S50c is a fascinating artifact from the moment when camera manufacturers genuinely believed proprietary wireless services would define the future of photo sharing. The hardware is well-executed — all-metal body, optical VR, proper wide-view LCD — and the WiFi actually worked, which was more than could be said for most contemporaries. The AF was sluggish and the image quality modest, but as a design object and a time capsule of early connected photography, it holds up. The wave-surface silhouette in Gloss Silver still looks excellent today.