Best Digital Cameras, Customer Reviews

Review by emanon52:

I just bought my 2nd Casio Exilim camera.The 6mp that I lost,did such nice job,I figured I couldn’t go wrong with 10mp.I have not been disappointed.This camera does everything the competition does for less.The setup is easy and the pictures are nice and crisp.The size is perfect and the styling is attractive.The on/off button is kind of tricky for big hands and fingers.Overall this is an excellent camera and I would reccomend it to my friends.

Review by Gregory R. Hunter:

I gave this camera as a birthday gift to my wife. We both love the little digicam. She needed a very compact camera to fit in her purse, but she also wanted zoom capability and excellent image quality. The credit card-sized exilim gave her everything she wanted. My wife ignored the instructions. She just switched the thing on and started taking pictures. It really is that easy to use. 5-stars all around.

Review by Joseph Conrad:

I’ve had the Casio Exilim H10 about 2 weeks, during which I was on vacation taking a lot of pics. I chose this camera over the competing pocket super zooms for several reasons. 1) The telephoto range is good – not quite as much as the Canon or Panny, but plenty for hand held photography. I really appreciate the long lens for candid photography – even if the subject is aware that you are photographing them, the extra distance makes the subject less self conscious. 2) The camera allows a good deal of manual control – I expecially like the ability to manually focus for those tough shots (this also eliminates focus lag). 3) This camera has the ability to focus quickly (important to me because shutter lag drives me nuts when I’m taking candids). The standard focus is pretty fast, and there is a quick focus mode that is very fast at the cost of a few mis-focused shots. 4) It is small – fits in my pocket easily, or in a very small belt pouch (Tamrac 3805 Neoprene). It is small enough to take everywhere, so I always had it with me when I saw an opportunity. 5) It takes HD video – a real advance from my last camera.

I was very happy shooting with the H10. This is the first camera I’ve had with optical image stabilization – a great invention for those of us who like long lenses or available light photography. Almost all my shots, day and night, were done with available light. If flash is turned off in the menu, it stays off when the camera is cycled off and on (avoiding those embarrassing unintended flashes in museums etc). My biggest complaint is that the zoom is too fast, making it hard to frame exactly. Although I generally don’t take wide angle shots, I did find the extra-wide angle useful on more occasions than expected. I did not use ‘best shot’ scene modes, nor did I find the makeup and vivid landscape gimmicks useful. I wish there was more direct menu access (or buttons) for features like self timer, picture brightness, flash and focus mode. I wish there were an optical viewfinder, but no direct competitor has one either. I have not yet had a chance to critically evaluate picture quality, but the pics look good on a computer screen. [...] A small camera like this can’t be as good as one with a larger sensor (and consequently larger size), but the pics look fine to me.

Update 1: I keep discovering good things about this camera. It can be configured to remember the last zoom setting before it was turned off — great One can configure the rocker buttons to quickly change an often used setting (I set it to control exposure brightness (EV shift), but it can alternatively be used for metering, white balance, ISO setting or self timer (but only one of these).

Update 2: A month later still happy. Those of you who have questions might want to download the pdf manual from the casio support site. It’s not always clear, however. Took me a while to realize that turning a setting ‘on’ in the Memory panel does not tell the camera to always turn the setting on, it tells it to remember how it was set the last time the camera was on. Not intuitive, but a neat feature when you understand it.

I’m very pleased with this camera — it may not be perfect, but it is amazingly good.

Review by Stanley Brodsky:

I also have had a Casio ultracompact the EX-Z850 before and I have been mostly happy with that. My aim in purchasing the EX-H10 was to find an ultra-compact camera with a long zoom and reasonable picture quality. The length and width are about the same as the competing Lumix, Canon, and Stylus 9000 models. The Stylus 7010 is slightly smaller and lighter, but had bad reviews. The Casio EX-H10 is about an ounce or two lighter than competing cameras at 6.8 oz and almost a half inch smaller in depth at 0.9 inches. That makes a difference. However, it feels heavier than the EX-Z850 and is a little bulkier. I recently tried out the Stylus TZ7 (also called the ZS3) and it was decidedly heavier at 8 oz and 1/2″ thicker.

The image quality of photos is good. It is not what one expects from a good SLR with a larger sensor, but pleasing. The zoom starts at 24mm — good for those of us who seek a wide-angle camera. The operation is straightforward. Video is more than simply satisfactory. I don’t like the photos one gets with the flash, but when it is turned off, the quality again is good.

The camera slips easily into a pocket, it has a huge capacity of shots on the battery — claimed 1000 and I don’t doubt it. What sold me was the combination of very small size, light weight, good image quality, and long zoom.

Review by emanon52:

I just bought my 2nd Casio Exilim camera.The 6mp that I lost,did such nice job,I figured I couldn’t go wrong with 10mp.I have not been disappointed.This camera does everything the competition does for less.The setup is easy and the pictures are nice and crisp.The size is perfect and the styling is attractive.The on/off button is kind of tricky for big hands and fingers.Overall this is an excellent camera and I would reccomend it to my friends.

Review by Gregory R. Hunter:

I gave this camera as a birthday gift to my wife. We both love the little digicam. She needed a very compact camera to fit in her purse, but she also wanted zoom capability and excellent image quality. The credit card-sized exilim gave her everything she wanted. My wife ignored the instructions. She just switched the thing on and started taking pictures. It really is that easy to use. 5-stars all around.

Review by Elizabeth Matzelle:

I purchased this camera from Best Buy on Thursday, and have shot over 30GB worth of photos and videos with it in just 4 days.

The highlights: This camera has every shooting mode under the sun. It will shoot 9 megapixel stills, up to 7 megapixel stills at the incredibly fast rate of 40fps, HD 720p video, and slow motion video ranging from 30-1000fps. It also has a 20x zoom (although I find the zoom to be only slightly longer than my Canon S3 IS “12x zoom”, but the wide angle is much wider).

The camera is very easy to setup and use, although I am still trying to figure out some of the more advanced features (like the ability for the camera to automatically take photos when an object enters the frame).

Image quality is pretty good, about the same as my Canon S3 IS. It does much deeper blues and reds than the Canon, and doesn’t have as bad chromatic aberration, but it’s greens are a little too blue for my taste, and the off-whites need some more yellow. Noise isn’t as high as I expected, but do realize this is not a DSLR, it’s a small lens and a small sensor.

Lighting seems to be key with this camera. In direct sunlight, it takes amazing photos and videos, but in low-light, the high speed videos begin to suffer. I haven’t had any that I took under normal lighting conditions come out unusable, but a few that I took in a very dim office nearly are.

My only complaints are minor, but here they are:

When shooting video, even with continuous AF off, it will still occasionally try to refocus, I find this very annoying

I cannot seem to find the settings to turn on move-in CS (motion-sensor triggers the camera)

While the latest firmware drastically improved write speeds for video, shooting single stills seems to take a long time to write to my class 6 memory card

I really don’t like the proprietary USB connection, it is very difficult to find the right angle to get it to plug in because it’s so narrow

Pleasant surprises:

Unlike the S3 IS, it remembers your photo and video settings very well, and if you set photos to manual focus and then want to take a video, the video will “pick up” that setting as well

The big 3″ screen on the back is beautiful, with the Canon I mostly used the viewfinder, not so with the Casio

Startup time is faster than I expected based on other reviews, from power on to first shot isn’t noticeably longer than the S3 IS

The flash is very bright and VERY fast, up to 5fps

Editing videos on the camera is ridiculously easy, hands down the best video editing GUI I’ve seen on a camera, makes it very easy to just keep the part of the video you want

Build quality is very good, I especially like the rubberized grip, it’s much more secure than the Canon, and easier to hold despite it’s heavier weight

I’ll post a further review after I’ve spent some more time with it, and hopefully a few of my little quibbles will be fixed in upcoming firmware.

Review by Christopher Mcintyre:

This thing is like a beefed up point-and-shoot. Don’t expect the quality of a DSLR. If you do, you will be disappointed.

Pros:

Very nice HD quality (if you have good lighting).

Great outdoor photos.

Great high speed photos (if you have good lighting).

Cons:

Bad pictures in low light or indoors.

Bad video indoors.

Goes through batteries very very quickly.

One really frustrating thing is that you could have a really bright screen on the viewfinder, but when you go to take the picture, all the light just goes away. The picture gets really dark. My old casio (pocket point-and-shoot) used to have a best shot selection that corrected this, but I can’t find it on this camera.

If you want to take pictures of you kid playing soccer, this is a great camera. Set the high speed and get all the action.

If you want to shoot in low light, or indoors, look for a DSLR.

If you do get this camera, get 8 rechargeable batteries so you always have four charged and ready.

Review by Happy in Russia:

Ok, I don’t know why others are giving this camera a low review. Perhaps they haven’t played with it enough. I have only had this camera for about two weeks. I gave it to myself for a birthday present cause it was time to get rid of my old Nikon 3.2 mp camera and I am about to spend a semester in France and throughout Europe doing some field work for my Master’s thesis.

First of all, the sheer size of this camera is amazing (its smaller than my ipod video). I was originally going to get the s10 but was unable to find it (I guess they’re not selling it anymore), but quite honestly 2 mp difference is no big deal. 12mp is more than enough. I have gotten so many compliments on this camera so far just because of its size and the fact that it has 12mp rather than 10 or even 8.

I think the picture quality is outstanding! I have been playing with it practically everyday taking pictures of anything and everything to get a good test out of it. So far, all these pictures look very very nice. One thing I like to do with cameras is play around with its settings. This camera, although it has a Best Shot Feature (pre-programmed settings for certain situations), I’m the type of person who likes to experiment with those settings anyway. This camera allows you to do that with the best shot feature and it has a manual feature so that you can adjust everything! I hate cameras that won’t let you mess with its pre-programmed settings cause let’s face it they don’t always get it right! Then the best part is, you can save these settings that you’ve created and the camera will remember them for you.

One thing I see in these reviews is that the picture quality is bad. The s12 (as I’m sure with other casios) has a “quick shutter” setting. This setting will immediately take the picture before it has a chance to focus (why you would do that I’m not sure). You can turn this off! That was one of the first things I changed when I started playing with it.

The HD videos this camera takes are very impressive! I have posted a couple of them on Youtube (look under my name: vsa23). They look fantastic on our 52″ HDTV! Have not run into any problems like the sound not being in sync with the video.

My ONLY complaint about this camera is that when the camera is on “Best Shot Auto Focus” (the lowest, easiest, setting for grandma), the focus makes very loud almost scratching noises because it is constantly focusing. I took the camera back, exchanged it for a new one, and even tried the store’s two displays and they all seem to do that. Perhaps this is something that will change with the later s12s that come out. But in all honesty, I don’t use that setting anyway (not that I’m a pro or anything), so it doesn’t bother me too much.

All in all, I am very happy with this little camera! It does everything I need it to do (which is really to primarily take pictures) and it offers so much more than I need at the same time (make up setting, dynamic photo, smile shutter, face detection, youtube capture, and more!). If you’re looking for a very nice camera with lots of features in a small compact travel-friendly camera then this one is a very good choice. I will be posting some of my sample photos on Amazon’s customer images thing. Hope you all find this review useful!

Review by Brian K. Martin:

I usually shoot with a DSLR and wanted to get a new small camera to carry around and replace my 5 year old Pentax Optio S4i. My main criteria for picking the camera were weight, HD video capture, image quality, and ease of use. I’ve since updated this list to include image stabilization.

The casio s12 is one of the smallest cameras you can get. Reviews also said the camera was snappy. Looking at reviewer’s test shots showed it had very good image quality, so I picked one up.

I wanted to like this camera. I tried to like this camera. But in the end the camera is just too unreliable to be used as a point and shoot. The images typically look very good on the camera’s screen, but on a large monitor they were often under saturated, auto white balance was off, and most importantly they were frequently out of focus. With this camera, you need to pre-focus with a 1/2 shutter press before taking a picture. Far too often, the camera would never focus – even in sunlight. The only time there was reliable focus was when the subject was relatively close to the camera (a couple yards or less away) and cooperative. When the focus worked correctly, the picture quality was still not perfect (harsh chromatic aberration) but was admittedly much better than average. I cannot figure out why the focus is so hit or miss. Perhaps it is operator error or lack of image stabilization. It may even be that the camera defaults to focus a few feet away when its autofocus algorithm fails. This would be fine for taking a picture of your friends sitting at a table with you, but it does not work if you are zoomed-in on your kids playing in the yard.

The HD video quality was fairly good for nearby subjects. It did suffer from lack of any image stabilization technology and it is doubtful anyone would be using this camera for shooting video with a tripod. With a camera this small I really think you need some form of image stabilization.

I will return the Casio and try one of the new Canon’s or the Lumix FX-35/37/48 (or even the new Pentax w80). I would only recommend the Casio for someone who primarily shoots nearby, cooperative subjects. Those images seem to come out OK most of the time and even excellent once in a while. This camera would not be my recommendation if you want to capture your kids candidly. If you like the Casio style or feature set, perhaps the Casio Z400 will be better since it has image stabilization, a longer zoom, and perhaps some updated firmware.

Positives:

* Easy to use

* Great feature set

* Small (but not too small) size

* Great set of ‘best shot’ modes, including a unique whiteboard and business card mode which can replace your scanner

* Unlimited length HD video capture in AVI format (good for Windows) at 24fps. The lack of 30fps in HD mode wasn’t noticeable.

* Good build quality with excellent LCD screen

* Good low-light focus lamp

* Potential to take some very good pictures

Negatives:

* Very unreliable focus and sometimes unreliable white balance

* Terrible printed user manual (but the online manual is very good)

* No standard cable connections on camera for USB

* No digital video out from the camera

* Some of the in-camera features just did not work reliably. Most notable is the feature where you can subtract the background from around your subject and place the subject in another image.

* Lens not very wide (~36mm)