Casio Exilim EX-Z30

Opinion: I rate myself as a beginner only because the rest of the ratings suggest a "photographer" bent (I have been taking family and vacation photos for decades). I bought this camera based on price, size, then quality output (I'm cheap). I wanted something to start a portfolio of my renovation and remodeling. As well I didn't want to know I had a camara around my neck when skiing or hiking. With a computer systems background I have watched with half interest my friends marvel over thier new toys. Now I'm witnessing first hand just what they pack into these things. I'm guessing most of us will never use most of these features, kind of like buying Word for home wordprocessing.

The Z30 has far exceeded my expectations in all aspects. It is very easy to operate, intuitive fits into a pocket and feels sturdy to the touch.

Caveat; I have not taken any portraite shots yet, but have taken pictures at night and the flash lit up the subject perfectly.

Opinion: great camera, super duper long battery life. brought it to bali for 9days 8 nights, took over 200 pics and 5 videos, and guess what, i only used up 1 bar of the battery life! image quality is good and very very easy to use.

Opinion: The following is from a beginners point of view after 3 months of ownership.

Pro's:

The battery is fantastic, I've used similar ultra-compact Canon's and I'd guess that battery lasts nearly double the amount of time.

As long as you obey the correct distances Macro mode gives what I think are excellent results.

Video recording is reasonable for a camera of this type. You can use optical zoom before you start, but it's locked once you are recording where only digital zoom is available.

A huge plus is the BestShots feature and Rudi's bestshot editor (http://get.to/bestshots). If you are a beginner you will need to sink a bit of time into finding out what settings do what and experimenting - but that's all part of the fun and the results will be your reward. Once you have set everything up selecting BestShots for certain situations is quick and easy.

The underwater set looks great, It's expensive (actually more than the camera costs) but if you go on beach holidays it looks like it would be great fun. Come next summer i'm not sure i'll be able to resist! (http://www.exilim.co.uk/specials/underwater/)

Opinion: Just bought this camera yesterday as a secondary to my Canon A80 and I've already taken a few dozen photos. Boy this is a fast camera! Just click and shoot. Boom! picture taken. That's one of the primary reasons I got it. It's a much faster "snapshot" camera than the canon. It's REALLY small, which I like a lot. Nice Aluminum body all around, really sturdy hinges on the battery/SD card door (unlike the Pentax cameras).

The pictures it takes expose very well, even with the flash. The colors are quite good, well saturated, and evenly toned. Indoors AND out. And that's with white balance set to auto. The pictures could be a little sharper, though. The Canon digital Elphs do a lot better in this regard, but they are larger, heavier, and have a smaller LCD to work with.

The other camera that the Casio competed with was the new Sony T1, but that camera does not have a tripod mount and is expensive in comparison. Did I mention that the Casio has a metal tripod mount. Fabulous.

For the price, and considering the competition, this is the best camera for the dollar in this category (ultra-compact Point and Shoot). Interestingly enough, the Z30 pictures are less grainy and less noisy than the Z40 pictures, which is why I went with the Z30 rather than the 4mp Z40.

Opinion: I bought the Casio EXILIM EX-Z30 after assessing and comparing it with the coolpix 4100. I chose this due to its increadible ease of use, simple method of selecting type of shot and lighting conditions etc. On top of this it is a gorgeous looking camera and so small and light. The picture quality on all of the settings I tried were really nice, excellent colour and very crisp photos. Even the night and low light settings produced really good images.
This said, the only thing (and I didnt realise this in the shop) is that it has to be recharged and the photos down loaded with the included docking station.This is all well and good if you use a PC, but using a lap top I really dont want to becarrying the docking station around with me.

I would have bought a card reader but the (un-named) shop I bought it from over charged me by £64 compared to the internet retailers so I took it back in exchange for the nikon coolpix 4100 which they agreed to price match for me. See my review of the coolpix 4100- as I took this back as well!

Opinion: Its a fantastic camera and ease of use. I've compared it with Canon and Fuji during the IT Show, but I decided to get this 3.2 Megapixel camera instead. It look good when in the Cradel while charging or downloading of images. The large 2.0-inch TFT LCD screen is a bonus, PictBridge, EXILIM Engine, Long Battery Life, one-touch recording or play modes and the 'Best Shot' mode provides sample images which makes photo taking easy and fun. The fast startup, high-speed playback, Auto Pan Focus, customized Start-up sound or image and Create HTML albums in the camera that can be viewed directly by web browsers is a plus point that make me fall in love with this camera. Check out the full specs. and one thing for sure, it makes head turning when they heard of the startup sound and animation of the camera.