e_commentor's Full Review: Casio EXILIM ZOOM EX-Z60 Digital Camera
Best buy opens their door for the day after thanksgiving holiday at 4:00 am in the morning for distributing coupons for "early birds". Their list of early bird had a impressive laptop for $379. One of my friends asked me if I could accompany him for an attempt to grab the laptop deal. I thought of giving it a try. My alarm rang at 3:30 am and by the time we reached Best Buy it was 3:55 am and a line of more than 500 people was ahead of us. By the time we decided to go to Circuit City for another laptop deal, it was 4:15 am and more than 200 people were lined ahead of us. We missed both. Frustrated, we came back empty hand ready to be scolded with our wives.
My wife wanted a digital camera in addition to the laptop. We had an 3 Megapixel Kodak camera with 3x optical zoom. Fortunately or unfortunately on one of our visits to beach during summer of June this year ( 2006), the camera was accidently, dropped in the sea shore. I was still expecting that it will revive after I dry it up and turn on again. It did not, and since then I have been on look for another digital camera. The thanksgiving sale provided the right opportunity.
I had green tea, got relaxed and started looking at some non early bird deals. Most of these deals were Kodak easy share series. My preference was Canon. However, I observed that canon does not offer as much of deal as Kodak or some other cameras. Casio was one of the cameras that I casually looked at and its initial specifications of 6.1 Megapixel and 3x optical zoom made me take a look at it. But I thought of giving it a try with the idea that I could return it to store any time I wanted. Or I could gift it to someone if I did not like. I was short of time and I was not in favor of it. I knew Casio from my days of engineering when I had used Casio Scientific Calculators. I knew that it is known Japanese brand and it will be a sleek camera that can fit in shirt pocket.
The advertisements did not say anything about its video capability, battery or charging. I was short of time to go through the internet to read specifications.
With this background I purchased the Casio Exilim EX-Z60 for $138 from KMart. It said that its original price was $199. I thought that they have exaggerated their original price a bit to make it look like it was a good deal.For, there were many other cameras of similar specifications on sale in $140 to $180. But I thought of giving it a try with the intention of returning it later on.
The Box Content The packaging is a dim colored red and black suggesting it is something an old fashioned product. It is not necessarily unattractive, but it is certainly not glossy and certainly does not has vibrant color photos on it. It is a geeks packaging. I opened the box as I started matching and reading its specifications. The contents of the box were very clearly printed on the Box under the heading "Accessories Included".
1. Battery Charger [BC-11L]
2. AC Power cord
3. USB Cable
4. AV Cable
5. Strap
6. CD-ROM
7. Lithium Ion rechargeable battery[Casio NP-20]
The thing that impressed me was the included Lithium Ion rechargeable battery and the battery charger. Very few cameras include rechargeable batteries and even fewer include battery charger. There is only one thing that you need, of course, - and that is an external SD-Card. The Camera includes only 8 MB of internal memory.
Manuals The Camera has a printed manual and another manual that comes with the CD. The printed version is a multilingual "getting started" manual. The Manual on the CD is however more comprehensive and at the same time it is not verbose. It delightfully covers everything is as few words as possible with pictures wherever necessary. I will strongly advice going through the soft copy of the manual at least cursorily.
Camera Operations The camera menu is straightforward and very intuitive. Its menu driven system is a pleasure to browse through. Since the LCD screen is big, the letters are very clearly visible.
The LCD Very few cameras come with 2.5 inch LCD. The LCD of Casio EX-SZ60 is not only big and bright, it is fully functional even against a daylight sun. The ability to work even under daylight partially obviates the need for the viewfinder. The viewfinder is not an option here and, as a result, we can not save power by turning the LCD off. I initially thought it as a drawback. But it would not have been possible to provide a compact camera when trying to put a viewfinder on a camera, the left 70 % of which is occupied by the LCD and the remaining 30 % of the right is just enough for the essential buttons.
Battery and Charger Lithium Ion Chemistry provides one of the highest packing density. It is universally used in Cell phones. As it is produced in mass, it can be source of low cost power. The similar Kodak cameras use rechargeable Lithium Metal Hydride batteries. Similar canon cameras use 4 of the LiMH batteries of AA size. The AA sized batteries take quite a bit of space. The sleek design of Casio would not have been possible without the use of the sleek Li Ion Batteries.
Once fully charged, the camera lasts about 90 minutes taking 180 photos according to the manual. I have yet to cross verify it under normal working condition. The Casio EX-Z60, however does not has view finder. And therefore reducing the power consumption by turning the LCD off is not an option.
The battery charger is supplied as an accessory. I would have liked it they could have provided a simple connector and charging electronics inside the camera itself. Nowadays a lot of inexpensive Integrated circuits are available that act as a standalone charger for Lithium Ion batteries. They are inexpensive because they are used in ubiquitous cellphones. The question is if cellphones can use built in chargers, why not this camera. I hope Casio will address this issue in the forthcoming models in future.
The Video and Audio It is the first digital camera that I tried for 30 frame per second video in 640 x 480 resolution. The most remarkable thing is that it is a 30 Frame Per Second Video. The picture is as smooth as you will take with any DV Camera under normal lighting conditions. The video gets too much of noise under low light conditions. However video quality is just adequate under normal indoor lighting. Under excessive lights vertical lines appear in the video, called "vertical smear". Under normal light conditions the picture video quality is fairly good.
Picture Quality After getting familiar with the basic operation of the camera I started putting the camera for actual photo quality test. My son has a lot of plastic toys and i got hold of few of his colored boxes and took some quick photos in Auto mode. The picture was downloaded on my laptop and I started comparing the colors with the plastic boxes, trying to find the difference. It is very hard to tell the difference between the real color and the photos.
I took many pictures, indoor and out door and they seem to be superb in quality. Outdoor photos are acceptable with more or less all point and shoot cameras if they are not taken against the sun. I was more interested in looking at the quality of the indoor and low light conditions. Thanks to strong flash and high sensitivity I have got superb quality even in very low light conditions. The Flash is effective even for distances of more than 15 feets.
The User of this camera will do well to familiarise himself with the 32 "Best Shot" modes. Some of these "Best Shot" are really worth trying - including "Night Scene", "High Sensitivity". I have not tried all the 32 modes, but camera user will do well to know what is useful to them and what is not. It also includes an "ebay" mode which shoots object in 2Megapixels to conserve space. It looks cheap, but it is what it is. I am not sure if they were paid by ebay to advertise it ?
But the most impressive part of the Camera personally to me are not the superb quality pictures but the moderately good quality video. This tiny looking pocket camera can record video at 30 frame per second at resolution of 640 x 480. I recorded some quick home video and displayed it on my TV using the Cable that was provided with this camera. And the quality was amazingly better than what I had expected from what was supposed to be a point and shoot camera. The Audio is mono. With a 2 GB memory card I could record about an hour of decent quality video. In my earlier outdoor visits I was always reluctant to take both video camera and digital still camera as it is a bit difficult to concentrate on both of them besides handling problem. But with Casio Exlilim I can afford the luxury of recording fairly good quality video along with good quality stills. The Video should however not be compared with the full fledged DV Cameras.
I am still experimenting with the Camera and will upload more details as I play more with it.
The Specification
Sensor
• 1/1.8" Type CCD
• 6.37 million pixels total
• 6.0 million effective pixels
Image sizes
• 2816 x 2112
• 2816 x 1872 (3:2)
• 2304 x 1728
• 2048 x 1536
• 1600 x 1200
• 640 x 480
Movie clips • 640 x 480
• 320 x 240
• With audio WAV
File formats • Still: JPEG (Exif 2.2)
• Movies: AVI (Motion JPEG)
Lens • 38-114mm equiv
• F3.1-F5.9
• 3x optical zoom
Image stabilization Anti Shake DSP
Digital zoom up to 4x
Focus • Contrast type AF (selectable between spot, multi)
• 9-point Multi AF
• Program AE
• Macro mode
• Infinity mode
• Pan focus
• Manual focus
Focus distance • Normal: 40cm to infinity
• Macro: 10 to 50cm
• Manual: 10cm to infinity
Metering • Multi-pattern
• Center weighted
• Spot
ISO sensitivity • Auto (Max ISO 800 when using 'Anti-Shake' or' High Sensitivity' BEST SHOT modes)
• ISO 50
• ISO 100
• ISO 200
• ISO 400
Exposure compensation • +/-2EV
• in 1/3 EV steps
Shuttter speed 1/2 to 1/2000 sec
Aperture F3.1/4.4 (auto switching)
Modes • Still
• Still with audio
• Continuous shutter (normal speed, high speed, flash continuous)
• BEST SHOT
Scene modes 33 BEST SHOT modes
White balance • Auto
• 6 modes
• Manual
Self timer • 2 or 10 secs
• Triple self-timer
Flash • Built-in
• Range: 0.1-3.7m (wide) 0.6-1.9m (tele)
• Auto
• On
• Off
• Soft Flash
• Red eye reduction
Viewfinder No
LCD monitor • 2.5-inch TFT
• 115,200 pixels
Connectivity • USB 2.0
• AV
• Microphone
Print compliance • DPOF
Storage • 8.3MB internal memory
• SD / MMC compatible
Power • NP-20 Lithium-ion rechargeable battery
• Charger included
Weight (no batt) 118 g
Dimensions 95.2 x 60.6 x 19.8 mm
6.0-megapixel CCD captures enough detail for photo-quality 14 x 19-inch prints 3x optical zoom; 2.5-inch LCD display Start-up time of approximately 1....More at Amazon Marketplace
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