Casio Exilim EX-Z50 Review

[smc1377]

This review is for the Casio EX-Z50. However, many of this will apply to the other cameras in the same line that came out at the same time, mainly the Casio EX-Z40 (4mp version with slightly less features) and the Casio EX-Z55 (larger screen than Z50, plus a few extra features).

I originally bought this camera for $125 on eBay a couple years back when they were selling for $300 at the cheapest online stores. The reason I got such a good deal on it was because the camera did not come with anything at all, just the camera body (no battery, no charger, no manual, nothing). They guaranteed that it would work and had a 30-day warranty on it. I still purchased it because I already had a Casio P600 that uses the same proprietary battery and the rapid charger. So then I naturally purchased a couple knock-off battery packs on eBay for another $16 shipped.

A few quick facts about the camera. It's a 5 megapixel camera, 3x optical zoom (35-105mm), 4x digital zoom, 2" screen, credit card sized camera. I can literally put my credit card over the camera and it'll cover up the camera. The camera is less than 1" thick with the lens retracted into the camera body.

Besides the usual functions of a digital camera, here are a few of the neatest features of this camera.

• Fast startup time. This camera will boot up, extend the lens and is ready to be fired in about a second.
• Pan Focus. This camera will allow you to instantly take a picture without focusing so that you can catch the action. Most cameras won't shoot a picture until it focuses on the subject, or it'll shoot a badly focused picture. With Pan Focus, the camera defaults into a mode much like point and shoot film cameras where all you do is point and click.
  
  The way the camera is able to determine what you want to do is, if you press the shutter button down all the way really fast, the camera will default to Pan Focus and take the picture instantly. The shutter lag is listed at .01 second, so basically, it takes a picture right when you press the button. But if you press the shutter button only halfway, it'll focus like any normal digital camera, then press it all the way to take the picture.
• Best Shot Modes. With these 25 modes, you can quickly change your camera settings to optimize the camera's ability to adapt to the situation. For example...
  • Best Shot Mode #1 is "Portrait Mode" where the camera increases flesh tones and chooses a large aperture to blur out the background.
  • Mode #2 is "Scenery" where it sets focus to infinity, sharpness to hard and high saturation.
  • One mode that is very unique is called "White Board, etc." This mode allows you to take a picture of a squarish object like a whiteboard or a painting from an angle (be it from below, above, right, left, etc.) and the camera will skew, rotate, morph the image so that it appears like you took the picture from straight on. This now only makes the picture more pleasing, it also allows you to use a flash and not have that flash reflected right back you your camera.
  • Another fun mode is called "Coupling Shot." In this mode, you can take half a picture first, then shoot the other half. This mode is useful if you want both people in your party in the picture, but have no tripod nor someone to take the picture. You can literally take the left half of the picture first, complete with person one and the background. This first half of the picture is ghosted on the left side so that you can then line up the background and then take the picture of person 2 on the right half of the screen. The camera then seamlessly fuses the two halves together into one picture.
    
    I've found that the best used of this feature is to combine two peoples' faces into one picture. Like I'll take a picture of the right side of my niece's face, then I'll take the left side of my nephew's face and once the camera fuses the two together, you get a really funny looking image.
    
    Others have also used it on couples to project what their offspring would look like.
  • Two User Recall Modes. If there's a certain setting or settings that you really like, you can set it as a preset so that you can recall the settings with just a couple clicks.
• Movie with sound. This camera is capable of recording video clips with sound. The length of the clip is only limited by the size of your memory card. The quality is not that great, since it's only shooting at 15 fps at 320x240 resolution, but it's good enough for internet usage.
• Rule of Thirds Display. This camera can overlay a black grid on the screen that splits the screen up into thirds both horizontally and vertically. This is very helpful when trying to compose shots, not only to meet the rule of thirds, but to straighten out horizons in your shots.

This camera is a great pocketable camera in that it's made of solid metal. I've carried this camera with me all over the place in my pocket. My wife also have kept it in her purse of diaper bag. My one year old daughter also finds it to be a nice toy to play with and drop. So as you can see, the camera is very durable.

Image quality wise, it does lack some. At ISO 100, it takes great pictures. At 200, grain starts to creep in. At 400, its maximum, grain or noise is quite noticeable. But then that could be just me now that I'm much more in tune with my pictures. When I first bought it, the noise didn't bother me one bit.

With its incredible startup speed and non-existent shutter lag, this camera is perfect for parents. I can't tell you how many times I've heard from others how they didn't get that picture of their kid blowing out their birthday candles or scoring the game winning goal because their camera would not boot up fast enough or focus fast enough. With this camera, it's whiz-bang!

If you're looking for a small, pocketable, durable camera, you MUST take a look at the Exilim line (they have much better ones out now). Casio doesn't have much market-share here in the US, but I understand they are quite reputable in Japan.

This camera is excellent and I wouldn't trade it for anything. Even if someone offered what I paid for it, I wouldn't sell it.

**EDIT**
I forgot to mention a key feature of this camera.

This camera also has macro mode. It actually even switches to macro mode automatically so you don't have to change the mode manually, but you can if you want to. One thing about this camera is that you can almost cram the camera right into the subject when in macro mode. This makes from some interesting photos (see the Cram Method thread in another part of the forum).