Casio QV-4000 Review, Phil Askey, November 2001

Review based on a production QV-4000, firmware v1.00

Not a lot of people know this but the QV-4000 was only the second four megapixel digital camera to be announced (the first was Toshiba's PDR-M81). Add to that the the QV-3000 was the first three megapixel digital camera and it's clear that Casio don't drag their heals in keeping up. Casio are on the 'electronics manufacturers' side of the current manufacturer split in the digital camera market, as such they have to prove themselves with their products rather than simply being able to use their name and past reputation.

The QV-4000 was announced back on 22nd June and is available in two different body colours depending on the sales region (black seems to be the colour for the US). From a photographic point of view it boasts a Canon Lens (yes, the same lens used in so many other 3 mp digital cameras) and the Sony 4 megapixel CCD. Feature wise it's fully loaded, with a large range of manual control as well as various focus modes, built in panorama assist, and a superb 'best shot' scene shooting mode which by default has 5 settings but there are no less than 100 scene settings which can be copied onto your CompactFlash card (from the supplied CD-ROM).

If you're new to digital photography you may wish to read the Digital Photography Glossary before diving into this review (it may help you understand some of the terms used).

Conclusion / Recommendation / Ratings are based on the opinion of the reviewer, you should read the ENTIRE review before coming to your own conclusions. Images which can be viewed at a larger size have a small magnifying glass icon in the bottom right corner of the image, clicking on the image will display a larger (normally 960 x 720 or smaller if cropped) image in a new window. To navigate the review simply use the next / previous page buttons, to jump to a particular section either pick the section from the drop down or select it from the navigation bar at the top. DPReview calibrate their monitors using Color Vision OptiCal at the (fairly well accepted) PC normal gamma 2.2, this means that on our monitors we can make out the difference between all of the (computer generated) grayscale blocks below. We recommend to make the most of this review you should be able to see the difference (at least) between X,Y and Z and ideally A,B and C.

This review is Copyright 2001 Phil Askey and the review in part or in whole may NOT be reproduced in any electronic or printed medium without prior permission from the author. For information on reproducing any part of this review (or any images) please contact: Phil Askey.