casio z600 | sample images
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Details at a glance
Megapixels: 6
Optical Zoom: 3x
Digital Zoom: 4x
LCD screen: 2.7 inch
Storage: SD/MMC (8.3mb int)
Size: 88.5 x 57 x 20.5mm
Weight: 112g
(full details at bottom of the page)
We clicked with
Image quality, speed, low light, build quality
Shots in the dark
Scene modes can be a little cumbersome, may be hard to get hold of
Links
More Casio information
www.casio.co.uk
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It's small, it's silver, it has a huge screen on the back a 3X optical zoom and 6MP inside. The Casio Exilim EX-Z600 looks very like a lot of the quality digital cameras on the market but in use it turns out to be something rather special.
Features
Cameras are changing very very fast. Features that were just dreams a while ago are now showing up on most cameras we test. For example. a year ago, a camera with anti shake technology was big news. Now it seems that all compact cameras have it. It's the new must have for the season and of course the Exilim has “Anti Shake DSP”. This is software based anti shake - essentially the camera applies some very clever software to make the picture look less blurred. This is way ahead of normal sharpening but still falls a little short of hardware optical image stabilisation such as you find in some of the Panasonic cameras and many DSLR bodies and lenses.
With this in mind, manufacturers have to come up with ever more elaborate features to get our attention. I'll highlight a couple from the Z600 but rest assured that it also has pretty well every headline grabbing feature you might want - check the spec sheet for full details.
Cradle
Cradles are getting more common with compact cameras. The idea is simple - drop the camera in a custom cradle and it sits safely on your desk and charges up. You can also attach the cradle to your computer so that by pressing a single button all your pictures are transferred to your hard drive.
The cradle with the Casio Exilim Z600 can also hook up to your television so that you can se your masterpieces on the big screen. There's a slideshow button that will show your pictures either on the TV or on the back of your camera.
The thing I like most about this cradle is that it's free - or at least the bundle with the camera includes it, so that's one less thing to buy.
Battery life
Battery life on cameras is going up all the time. The Z600 boasts that it can take 550 shots on a single charge. In fact I never managed to test this. What I can tell you is that a hard day's testing (maybe 300 shots) causes the battery to dip by one bar. Drop the camera on the cradle to transfer your pictures and it's fully charged in a remarkably short time. Unless I was going to take a lot of shots or spend more than 3 days away from electricity then I wouldn't bother with a second battery for this camera.
On test
Handling
Small enough to fit in your pocket, large enough that you aren't really worried about it snapping in half. It has a very similar height and width to most cameras in this class - just about the same as a credit card. Something less than an inch thick makes it on the slimline side but of course much thicker than Casio's “S” range.
The buttons are familiar enough. There's a 4 way controller and the usual collection of menu, play, zoom delete etc buttons. While they are very small, the controls are well laid out with decent spaces between them and I had no problem using them.
Overall the camera exudes quality and the screen is no exception. Casio call it a “2.7 inch super bright LCD…producing an impressive luminance of 1200 candelas per square metre”. I'm not entirely sure how to convert a 2.7 inch screen to square metres or what a candela is so I tried my own test. I took 3 different compacts out on a bright sunny day. The Z600 was by far the easiest and most pleasant to use. It remained visible even on a sunny day with sunglasses on and seems to work equally well in a darkened room. It is also usable from a remarkably wide angle - if you like to hold your camera above your head you should still easily be able to frame shots. With the Z600 Casio seem to have the screen spot on for me.
Image quality
I was very impressed by the images that the Z600 took. They have vibrant colours and excellent punch and sharpness. Some users may find them just a little too saturated but like many other things this can be tweaked in the menu to your liking.
With some 6MP cameras I have been hesitant to print over A4 because they seem to “smear” the out of focus areas. With the Z600 I have no such reservations. With the right image I'd be happy to push the camera to A3.
One particular area that I liked was low light performance. This is a very hot area at the moment with manufacturers releasing camera with higher and higher ISO plus anti shake in an attempt to allow users to take pictures in darker than ever conditions. The Z600 only allows a maximum ISO of 400 but if you select “Anti shake” or “High sensitivity” mode then this increases to 800. I'm not sure why Casio have made this limitation because even at ISO 800 levels of noise are acceptable. Obviously if you go looking in the shadows then noise is present but for a well composed scene viewed at reasonable sizes they are remarkably good for a camera of this size. I took the Z600 to a museum where photography was allowed but flash prohibited. With anti shake turned on, I was getting decent shots handheld at 1/15s and slower and the Z600 did a very nice job of rendering lots of detail without excessive noise.
Shooting
The z600 is a pretty responsive camera. Power up is decent at 0.9 seconds and with the flash turned off I managed 15 shots in 19 seconds using a SanDisk Extreme III high performance SD card that's about 1.25 seconds shot to shot. A couple of areas where the speed of the camera really shows are in shutter lag and picture viewing. Shutter lag is officially 0.005 seconds. That is after you focus, meter and hit the button but that's really pretty good. Once you have the shot in focus then there's no appreciable delay in releasing the shutter. Of course that's without flash - with flash the response is much slower, partly because the camera makes several pre flashes to check metering etc.
Picture viewing is a joy on the Z600 - hit the button and you see the next picture immediately. Hit it repeatedly as fast as you can and the pictures flash across the screen. This alone makes it a very pleasant camera to use.
What's not to like
They just replaced it! Seriously I could not believe this but I got in from a day's testing of this camera and saw an email that the Z600 is being replaced with the Z700. I know things move fast in the digital camera but this is a camera that has been available less than 4 months and is easily competing with the best in its class. The Z700 adds an extra 1 million pixels and a couple of very clever sounding features but if you are looking for a great use anywhere compact right now I would recommend looking for a Z600 - prices are bound to drop as they clear the last ones out and this is a very good camera for the money.
I really struggled to get on with the best shot modes. They should be easy enough to use. Press the “BS” button and select a scene like the one you want to shoot such as a portrait. There's a sample picture and a piece of descriptive text such as “Enhanced flesh tones. Setting zoom to telephoto blurs the background”. There are 32 of these setting plus “user defined” (including one that doesn't take pictures at all!). But the only way to get from one to another is to scroll through them. The real problem is that the camera returns to “auto” every time you power it off. This is logical enough but it was frustrating to be in a museum and constantly have to scroll to setting 25 (High sensitivity) every time the camera powered itself down.
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This is a very good camera indeed. Don't confuse the Z600 with the S600 which is even tinier but doesn't take nearly such good pictures. Battery life is great at 4 - 500 shots and this camera would be on my shortlist if I was shopping for a compact digicam. The only downsides are minor niggles and the upsides are speedy response, great screen and excellent image quality. Low light pictures are particularly good with the Z600. Online suppliers are showing this camera at between £150 and £200 complete with the docking cradle and I would expect even this to drop as the camera is replaced with the Z700.
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Casio S600 specs
| Mega-pixels: | 6 |
Photo: | JPEG |
| Optical Zoom: | 3x |
RAW: | No |
| Digital Zoom: | 4x |
Aperture: | F/2.7-5.2 |
| LCD: | 2.7 inch |
Focal Length: | equiv. 38-114mm |
| Dimensions: | 88.5 x 57 x 20.5mm |
Shutter: | 4 sec to 1/2000 |
| Weight: | 112g |
Exposure: | ISO 50 to 800 |
| Storage: | SD/MMC (8.3mb int) |
Movie: | MPEG (320x240@20fps) |
| Battery: | Li-ion NP-40 |
Microphone: | Yes |
| Interface: | USB 2.0, AV |
PictBridge: | No |
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Included accessories:
AC adaptor, CD-ROM, USB cable (Full speed USB 2.0 compatible), USB cradle, Wrist strap, User's quick reference guide, Proprietary SUPER LIFE rechargable lithium-ion battery (NP-40)
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