And the first camera of the new week award goes to….Casio for the Exilim EX-S770. They weren't taking any chances on somebody beating them - the press release is timed for one minute past midnight on a Bank Holiday Monday.
The EX range from Casio has always been ultra stylish and very slim and the EX-S770 is no exception. 127 grams of slinky stainless steel, which is about 17mm thick and comes wrapped in three “exciting” colours: red, blue and silver (though the ad agency chose the adjectives “premium”, “blazing” and “graphite” - I'll let you figure out which is which).
Flip it over though and it's a whole new story. (I'd better point out that I haven't even seen a picture of the back of one yet!). There's a wide screen LCD measuring 960X240 pixels. That means it's in a 14:9 ratio like a widescreen telly rather than 3:2 like standard print sizes. The sensor of course matches the screen so it can take pictures that are perfect for showing on your widescreen plasma. If you choose to record movies then they can also be taken in widescreen for your viewing pleasure. Of course you can also shoot in 3:2 format if you want to produce, say, 6X4 prints though this will reduce the resolution from 7.1MP down to about 6.3MP. Casio screens are some of the best we see here at ThinkCamera so it will be good to see if this is up to their usual standard.
There's also a brand new feature on the camera, which sounds kind of cool. You can use the bundled “data transport” software to transfer computer data to your camera. Documents, email and web pages are all converted to JPEG format so that they can be displayed on the back screen. It's a novel idea and one that might work very well with a great screen. Some of the applications suggested include tourist maps and attractions - just download them to your camera and never get lost. (Yes, I know you could just take a picture of the map…) For the ultimate in style you could download all those emails you intended to read to your blazing red EX-S770 before a trip to Tuscany. Then you could ignore them on your camera too.
Apart from that it has pretty well all the features you would expect to be crammed into a tiny steel body - 3X optical zoom, anti shake and 35 scene modes. Silver version should be out in August (yep, by Thursday) and the brighter colours in September.
Casio EX-S770 specification
| Mega-pixels: | 7.2 |
Photo: | JPEG |
| Optical Zoom: | 3x |
RAW: | No |
| Digital Zoom: | 4x |
Aperture: | f/2.7-6.2 |
| LCD: | 2.8 inch |
Focal Length: | equiv. 38-114mm |
| Dimensions: | 94.5 X 60.4 X 17.3mm |
Shutter: | 4 sec to 1/2000 |
| Weight: | 127g |
Exposure: | ISO 50 to 400 |
| Storage: | SD |
Movie: | 704X384@30fps |
| Int. Mem: | 6mb |
Battery: | Li-ion NP-20 |
| Interface: | USB 2.0, AV |
PictBridge: | No |
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