Nikon’s first try at a rugged point-and-shoot camera manages to do just about everything right-capturing sharp images, surviving drops, geotagging your photos, shooting underwater, and grabbing 1080p30 video. And it does it all quickly, with faster performance than any other rugged model we’ve tested.

Similar in design to other rugged compacts, the 16-megapixel AW100 sports a sealed lens with an internal zoom mechanism, located on the top corner of the camera. It measures 2.6 by 4.4 by 0.9 inches and weighs 6.3 ounces. Its 5x optical zoom lens covers a 28-140mm (35mm equivalent) field of view and has a nice macro capability for capturing smaller objects.

A 3-inch, 460 k-dots LCD dominates the rear of the camera. It’s very bright and sharp, making it easy to frame and review images in a variety of lighting conditions. Control buttons are rubberized and sealed, but are quite responsive to the touch.

The camera has all the standard control buttons, plus a special Action button, which can be configured to bring up the GPS world map or to adjust shooting settings. Pressing it brings up a menu from which you can adjust the shooting mode, start recording a movie, view photos, or view the world map.

The camera is rated to survive drops of up to 5 feet and can be used underwater to depths of 33 feet. I was able to drop the camera over and over again without it missing a beat.

The AW100 is the speediest rugged camera that we’ve tested. It can start up and grab a shot in 1.4 seconds, only requires 0.8 second of recycle time between photos, and records a 0.1-second shutter lag.

I used Imatest to measure the camera’s performance in terms of image sharpness and noise. The software analyzes a test chart as shot by the camera to deliver a center-weighted sharpness score, measured in lines per picture height. A score of 1,800 lines is considered to be very sharp, and the AW100 came in well above that metric—it recorded 2,166 lines. The Panasonic Lumix TS3 didn’t do nearly as well, recording only 1,347 lines.

Overall, the AW100 is an excellent first attempt from Nikon at a rugged camera. It unseats our previous Editors’ Choice winner, the Panasonic Lumix DMC-TS3, for performing admirably on all fronts, and for delivering snappier performance and sharper images.

The Fujifilm F550 EXR is curvier than the rest of the cameras, and is definitely shinier with a thick chrome outline running up the sides and top. The GPS unit juts out above the lens, lending it a small DSLR-like note. The mode dial is positioned at an angle, sitting diagonally in between the top and back panels. It’s a unique visual, but doesn’t do much for usability. A raised reverse-teardrop shape below the dial creates a mould for your thumb to gain a grip, but the video record button is awkwardly placed on the rise, making it hard to press.

The Olympus Tough TG-810 is also a weather-resistant, shock-proof camera, which means it’s designed with more constraints in mind than other compact cameras. The ports are all hidden behind a sealed, double-lock door for one, and the zoom controls are by necessity, buttons instead of the familiar toggle usually found surrounding the shutter release button.

We found the TG-810 to be not just a tough camera that can take abuse, but also a tough camera to use. The sliver of a power button is too hard to locate, the zoom toggle is stiff and unnatural, the buttons are too small for comfort, the nub of a joystick feels restricted, and the shutter release response feels a breadth too slow.

Despite having no manual controls and no RAW shooting mode, the 18X-optical zoom CooLpix S9100 should please both novices and pros, It has a great blend of creative automated controls and overall versatility that will make you forget about manual controls. If you want a long-zoom camera that can fit in your pocket, is easy to use, rarely takes a bad photo, and never gets boring, the S9100 is among the best.

The S9100 turned in the best overall score we’ve seen for a point-and-shoot camera in our testing for image quality. Its aggregate score for all four of our image-testing categories was the highest of any camera we’ve evaluated in the past year.

In its basic auto mode, the CooLpix S9100 earned Very Good scores for color accuracy, exposure quality, and Lack of distortion. In sharpness, it received a score of Good. Like many cameras, it has a tendency to make colors more vivid than they are in the real world, Besides two auto modes— a regular mode, and a scene-based one that chooses the applicable preset depending on the environment—the CooLpix S9100 offers 14 scene modes and an Easy Panorama mode.

The X100 is expensive, but there are enough committed camera fans out there for Fujifilm to have judged it worthwhile investing development resources in this fixed-lens camera.

The fully manual 12.3Mp camera is built from magnesium-alloy and has an APS-C sensor crammed in. The aperture, shutter speed and exposure compensation settings can all be checked before you switch on the X100. A 2.8in LCD offers an alternative viewing and composition option. There’s also a dedicated RAW button, which lets you switch between uncompressed shooting and processing mode.

The camera weighs 445g and is a chunky 54mm thick, so you won’t want to take it out and about on the off-chance it will get used. It’s anything but a point-and-shoot model, and has plenty of quirks.

Having spent some quality time with this camera this summer, we can attest to the fact that the Fujifilm X100 amply rewards patient use. A less complex (and less expensive) model, the £560 Fujifilm FinePix X10, is also available.

A camera doesn’t need to be packed to the gills with fancy electronics in order to take decent photos.

Lomo’s La Sardina analogue film cameras deliberately allow you to produce photos containing images laid over each other. In fact, the guide that comes with this 35mm camera suggests creative subjects for multi-exposure photos.

The oversized flash bulb is detachable and is the one concession to electronics. The La Sardina’s flash requires a single CR123A battery.

Coloured filters that fit over the camera lens offer a low-tech means of adding variety to your shot in the absence of zoom, art filters and f-stop adjustments. The La Sardina’s very simplicity allows you to focus on the subject and how they’re framed, rather than the mechanics of taking the shot.

Piping the Canon EOS 60D to the winning post, the Nikon D7000 offers great image quality, image depth and wide dynamic range. Its weather-sealed construction allows for shooting in extreme conditions. With a 39-point autofocus system, shutter speed of 30 to 1/4000 sec, auto ISO 100 to 6,400, this sturdy shooter packs in a punch with panache. It has fast focusing and a large bright viewfinder with 100 per cent coverage and a comprehensive feature set that all make a for superb shooting capability.

The Pentax Q provides DSLR-like picture quality from its 12.4-megapixel CMOS sensor and 8.5mm kit lens – a range of other Q Mount lenses are available. Snaps are full of rich colors, clear detail, and only occasional blown highlights, and it’s only marginally broader and heavier than a compact it’s one of the smallest interchangeable lens cams ever, in fact.

In other news, you get full-HD video at up to 30fps – although the mic is disappointingly mono the choice of shooting JPEGs or RAW files and a clear, three-inch LCD. The 250-shot battery is a bit of a let-down, though.

Although professionals are unlikely to break ranks from the twin photographic pillars of Canon and Nikon, Leica is a brand much lusted over by the fashion-conscious. But, while its top-end model, the £5,000 M9, remains unobtainable to most enthusiasts, the V-Lux 30 gives those with shallower pockets something to aspire to.

Finished in metallic black, with perhaps the most prestigious badge in modern-day photography occupying the top left of the fascia, the V-Lux 30 is a study in understated design. The 3in display on the hack is bright and cleat, and a touchscreen to hoot, allowing yon to select focus zones, zoom the lens and fire the shutter. The top dial scrolls through the usual options, including a fully manual mode, plus a custom mode mat has three nested sub- modes, allowing yon to quickly access groups of frequently used settings.

It look camera manufacturers a long time to respond to customers’’ demands for SLR-quality in a compact body. In the end, it was Sigma that led the charge with the DP1 in 2008.

It was an expensive and fairly eccentric camera, but it put the pressure on more established competitors to raise their game. Unfortunately, this is exactly what’s happened and Sigma is struggling to keep it. The DP2x is the third-generation model, but it still uses the same sensor as the original. Its screen remains 2.5in in size with a resolution of 230 kilopixels and video recording is stuck at 320×240 pixels.

It has a high sensitivity of ISO 3200. Another feature is digital image stabilization. It also has a versatile shooting mode and motion panorama. With all these features FujiFilm Finepix Z90 is truly recommendable.