If you're a bit of a night owl and enjoy taking your camera with you when you're out on the town, or at a live music gig, you probably already know the limits of a compact camera.

Built-in flash tends to be quite useless if natural light isn't available. With close-up portraits it can make subjects look washed out and completely spoil the ambience. If you're photographing a subject that's far away (like a band) then there's little chance that you'll throw enough light to illuminate a scene. Because of this, ISO adjustment is a great feature to fall back on.

The Nikon Coolpix S710 is a compact that's suited to night-time photography. Not only does it feature a 3-inch LCD screen that's bright and easy to view in low light, but it also comes equipped with a generously high ISO of up to 12800 (allowing you to capture images in lower light without the need for flash) as well a Vibration Reduction feature to cut down on unsightly image wobble.

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The S710 isn't the slimmest compact camera in the world, but it's still stylish. Measuring 92.5 x 57.5 24mm, the LCD pretty much fills the rear of the camera whilst the front is covered in brushed titanium. It feels comfortable in the hand with the operational controls, power and shutter buttons within natural reach.

Unfortunately, there's nowhere to rest your left hand whilst you're shooting so the monitor tends to get a little mucky quite quickly. This isn't so much of a problem in low light, but as it's the only way to alter menu settings and preview your shots it can be a little troublesome in daylight.

Power up the camera and the 6-21.6mm, f/2.8-5.6, Nikkor lens protrudes from the front of the camera body. Whilst it offers you good scope for wide angle photography and close-ups, the zoom is a little short and limiting, so don't expect to be able to capture subjects at a great distance with too much detail. Digital Zoom can also be used to add a little more telephoto scope, but as with all compacts that use this technology, the quality of the image can be jeopardised.

To the right-hand side of the LCD monitor you will find the button controls and a spinning control wheel that replaces the standard directional control pad. This proves handy when adjusting menu settings as it's responsive and easy enough to operate.

Click on the ‘Mode' button and you're presented with the camera's shooting menu. There's good scope for manual operation if you want to reign a little more over your shots, with Program, Shutter-Priority, Aperture-Priority and Manual mode, or alternatively you can fall back on Scene Modes.

If you're not sure what is the best Scene Mode for your subject and lighting there's a ‘Scene Auto Selector' where the S710 will pick the most appropriate settings for you. The camera does make a worrying crunching sound as it works through its options, but it's still accurate with its selection.

Explore the menu in greater detail and you will find some features that are unusual for a compact camera. First up is a high speed continuous shooting mode that is capable of capturing up to five frames if your finger is pressed down on the shutter button, at a rate of around 1.4 frames per second. It's not possible to fire the flash when in this continuous mode, so - unless you make use of the boosted ISO - this is only really good for day shots.

You have to trust that the camera is capturing images when in this mode as there's no shutter sound so it doesn't really give any indication that it's snapping away. It's only after you have released your finger from the shutter button that you get the message that the images are being recorded to the memory card.

As well as Movie and Voice Recording Modes, there's also a face recognition mode known as “Smile”. If a face is spotted in the frame the camera places a double yellow border around the focus area, fine-tuning the shot to achieve a sharp, well-exposed photograph.

The Nikon S710 is generally a nifty little compact that's not only quick and easy to operate but offers fast and reliable image capture and write speed. Unfortunately, we found that with the camera set to ISO 6400 and ISO 12800 there seemed to be a serious issue with the image quality.

Noise was perfectly acceptable, however, go past ISO 3200 and the camera seems to have a problem with auto White Balance. Images had an unacceptable orange cast that made the photos pretty unusable. This is a shame, as when shooting below ISO 6400 the quality of shots coming out of the 14.5 million effective pixel sensor was very good.

The Nikon Coolpix S710 is a stylish and durable camera that offers quick response times and intuitive controls. There's good scope for manual operation with plenty of opportunity to take the reins when it comes to exposure settings. Alternatively, if you prefer an easy ride, features like ‘Smile' and ‘Scene auto selector' allow the camera to do all the leg-work. Whilst the Coolpix S710 offers an impressive ISO range, we were disappointed with the quality of shots above ISO 6400. With this high sensitivity setting chosen, the camera struggled with Auto White Balance. This made the gesture of a high ISO setting fairly empty. Although this camera is good for wide-angle photography, some may be disappointed with its zoom range.