Nikon seems to be aiming at Canon's tail lately. At least with the high-end Coolpix models. The P7000 set out to be a G11-alike, the new P300 announced today appears to be an S90-alike. Note that I didn't write G12 or S95. Nikon clearly was aiming at the existing cameras at the time they kicked off these designs. With the P7000 they didn't fully hit the mark, IMHO (see my comparison review), and I'm pretty sure that they missed again with the P300. But I'm getting ahead of myself. News first.
Eight Coolpix were announced:
| Sensor | Lens | Other | |
| L120 | 14.1mp CCD | 25-525mm f/3.1-5.8 21x | 3" 921k dot LCD, US$279 |
| L24 | 14.1mp CCD | 37-134mm f/3.1-6.7 3.6x | 3" 230k dot LCD, US$119 |
| S3100 | 14mp CCD | 26-130mm f/3.2-6.5 5x | 3" 460k dot touchscreen, US$139 |
| S4100 | 14mp CCD | 26-130mm f/3.2-6.5 5x | 3" 460k dot touchscreen, US$179 |
| S6100 | 16mp CCD | 28-196mm f/3.7-5.6 VR 7x | 3" 460k dot touchscreen, $US199 |
| S9100 | 12.1mp BSI CMOS | 25-450mm f/3.5-5.9 18x | 3" 921k dot LCD, 1080P, in camera pano, US$329 |
| P300 | 12.2mp BSI CMOS | 24-100mm f/1.8-4.9 VR 4.2x | 3" 921k dot LCD, 1080P, in camera pano, HDR, US$329 |
| P500 | 12.1mp BSI CMOS | 22.5-810 f/3.4-5.7 36x | 3" 921k dot LCD, 1080P, in camera pano, US$399 |
So what's new here? Not a lot. The P300 is the only truly new camera here, and potentially interesting if it has good enough image quality. Unfortunately Nikon once again missed the mark: no raw capability, and it uses a smaller sensor than the S90/S95. The lens gets slow very fast, so that f/1.8 really only happens at 24mm. So the S95 can rest easy: the P300 isn't going to overtake it. The P500 is just an update with more lens and a few iterations on features. The Sx100 models are mostly iterations (the 9100 an extension with even more lens than the previous 8100 top).
It appears that Nikon's method for competing with cellphone cameras is "more megapixels, more lens." Not a terrible short term strategy, but the real issue is workflow convenience. The S3100 and S4100 appear to be attempting to address that last bit: auto-sharing with social media Web sites. But what's that really mean? Yep, more myPicturetown support and an unclear "or other social media websites via computer." I suspect that Nikon is adding an EXIF tag and then updating View NX2 and/or Transfer to deal with that automatically, but it's unclear from the information I've seen so far. And why you'd only do that for two models I don't know.
Footnote: outside the US it appears that Nikon has also added an L23 and S2500 model.