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We clicked with:
Ease of Use
Large LCD and fabulous zoom control
Sliding door to switch off and on
Shots in the dark:
Focusing can be tricky
The beep is very quiet
Noisy at high ISO levels
Price Comparison:
Casio Exilim EX-V7
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The Exilim EX-V7 is certainly very lovely to look at, as it's sleek and smooth and silver …actually it's a bit of a surprise that it says Casio as it looks very much like the compacts from a “certain other” well known camera manufacturer.
The camera has a wonderfully thin stainless steel body and measures 3.76” (w) x 2.35” (h) x 0.9”(d). It's just 5.26 ounces excluding battery and takes SD, SDHC, MMC and MMC plus memory cards. That's a small light thing to slip in your pocket.
There are 7.2 megapixels under the bonnet and located under a sliding panel is a very impressive 7x optical zoom. The camera is powered on by sliding the panel across - this makes it very nifty and very fast to operate. I like this a lot.
On the on the reverse there's a large 2.5” super bright LCD and two circular buttons which allow the user to select modes and change menu options. Two small buttons control the menu and playback and above this is a long switch, which operates the zoom.
Everything is easy to reach and get to grips with but like a lot of compact cameras it's best if you have dinky digits.
This is one of the most highly spec'd compacts I've ever seen, it has a special Casio anti shake DSP which reduces blur by using higher ISO sensitivity and faster shutter speeds with new motion analysis technology. Basically it decides on the most appropriate combination of ISO and shutter speed in order to capture a moving subject. Good stuff.
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There's also a host of modes from which to choose including best shot - whereby you follow the guidance that appears on the monitor to select the best type of shot that you want to capture. The relevant camera settings will then be set automagically. Save your best mode set-ups and you can recall them later.
There are 33 best shot options to choose and from there's even an eBay mode - which makes taking shots for “a well known online auction site” very simple. There are also 10 movie mode best shot options to choose from and it records movies using MPEG-4 encoding which promises good quality.
The small flash offers - auto, flash on, flash off, soft flash, red eye reduction. There are a plethora of recording options - still images, still image with audio (max 30 secs), movie mode with audio, macro with auto-macro function and voice recording functions.
The Focus modes include: contrast AF (spot, multi or tracking), AF assistlight, AF , macro (10cm to 40cm), infinity and manual focus.
The Exilim also possesses autotracking AF to follow moving subjects and keep them in focus until a shot is taken. Although when I tested this on a slow moving cat it didn't perform that well.
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The shutter speed depends on the exposure control but at the top end it's 1/2000 and the ISO range is 64, 100, 200, 400 and 800. There's also a self-timer - you can select either 10 seconds or if you're quick on your feet just 2 seconds. Quick, run!
Exposure metering offers: multi-pattern, centre weighted and spot and finally, you can select the following exposure controls: programme AE, shutter speed priority, aperture priority and manual exposure.
That's an awful lot of technology in a small compact!
The camera is very simple to use, although the focussing takes a little getting used to as it hops from focussed to unfocussed really quick. After focus lock it states that there's just an 0.08 second shutter release lag but it took some getting used to.
Once focus has been achieved the camera beeps and to be honest the beep isn't very loud. You can alter the tone of the beep which was great fun (ok I don't get out much) but it would have made more sense to alter how loud it is.
Playback functions include the ability to resize, rotate, copy, trim - and there is a 9 image display with slideshow functions.
There are 6 options for white balance and this is a really neat idea - an image is displayed and by selecting the required white balance you can view the result of your selection directly on the image. Fab. What you see is what you get technology!
Deletion is a simple two step process. As you would expect, image quality can be selected, and you can select from fine to normal but there's also economy - which I guess is the Ronseal of resolutions. Image playback is nice and fast, allowing the user to scroll 100 images in 10 seconds.
The Exilim is powered by a rechargeable lithium ion battery NP-50 and it also has a built-in internal flash memory although it's only 11.6MB.
The devil is in the details and the clever chaps at Casio have thought about power saving and you can select autosleep after 30sec, 1, or 2 mins. Nice.
They've also thought about what you do when you get the camera home and have rather thoughtfully included a stylish cradle and this is where you can charge the battery, transfer images (and movies) to your PC and playback all your great images. As it's got the Pictbridge technology so printing is a doddle.
Conclusion
The EXILIM EX-7 is a lovely compact it looks great (it's available in black as well as silver) and it's positively jam packed with features and the sliding panel makes it very very fast to operate.
The LCD is lovely and bright and the quality of the zoom is astounding but the results were good, although noisy at the higher ISOs.
Sadly the focusing lets it down a little! I just couldn't get a consistent result as the window of 'focusing opportunity' is just too small and the auto-tracking wasn't as good as I had hoped. Perhaps with persistence and a tad more patience the results could improve.
The flash is ok but as with most compacts you're liable to get hot spots. The best shots feature is a winner as there are so many options.
The EX-7 really holds your hand but if you have the time to get stuck in or are a little more experienced you can tailor this compact to your specific shooting requirements.
All in all it's a neat little number.
