Jerry Stevens
Senior Member
I have been shopping for a camera for my wife, who is an amateur point and
shoot photographer, but really has a natural eye for aesthetic composition as
well as catching very nice moments of spontaneity in people pictures. She
needed a replacement for her Minolta G500, which took excellent pictures, but
was real frustrating to use in terms of the small LCD and an unbelievably
cryptic menu system. We are preparing to go overseas, and she needed a
camera that was pursable, easy to use, with simple and intuitive menus, large
LCD, large pixel count for me to have cropping room, good movie feature,
and an optical viewfinder (she actually uses this, even though tiny on these
small cameras, especially in low light--just her preference). Ideally, the camera
would include some features that I could tease around with.
We both found this Casio unit every bit as nice to use as anticipated and could
confirm most of what has been reported in the reviews, and as have users who
have posted here. The camera was a lightweight charmer from the moment
you take it out of the box. Here are some nice impressions:
(1) The large LCD is great, even if not enough pixels. Besides, you get better
battery life--a tradeoff I think worthwhile.
(2) Talking about battery life, the unit was a very good performer. We still
would have gone with a spare battery, though, as is my habit with all
proprietary battery systems.
(3) The menu system is a breeze, a pleasure to work with. No manual needed--
really. Self-explanatory text and icons actually teach you what techniques are
used to create various preset scenes. My wife actually picked up some
photographic insight from these descriptive text boxes.
(4) The movie mode is stunningly clean and impressive for a camera of this
price point and market. The big letdown on movies, which I already knew
from reviews, was that QuickTime could not read the particular AVI video
codec, so all my Mac stuff (QT Pro, iMovie, etc.) could not read or edit the
video stream the camera produced. Workarounds posted on various threads
are cumbersome and do not work flawlessly, some even introducing a tad of
noise--very frustrating when starting with such a clean original file.
(5) Auto white balance was acceptable in most stills, even good in video.
Tungsten had to be corrected regularly, but no unit in this price range and
market is out there where this is not true.
On the downside, we did have problems on occasion with low-light focus,
camera blur, and a few picture quality issues, most annoyingly in saturation.
You can bring saturation down in the camera's own adjustable settings, but I
found -2 sometimes still not enough. (Good gosh Casio--does the real world
really look that saturated to you? So garrish as to be almost cartoonish in
character!)
Another minor complaint is that the price point is still too high for a point and
shoot, even with its capabilities, simply because the competition in this point
and shoot market is brutal. This unit is not necessarily a dollar-for-dollar "best
buy," depending on how important certain factors are to you. For me, the lack
of ports was much more frustrating than I had anticipated. That is, when you
keep in mind that the camera has no connection ports whatsoever on the
camera body, as most other competing cameras do, then you are forced to
knock down the evaluation of the "features" set. The docking station, though
light-weight plastic, is oddly shaped, so hard to pack. The constant fear is
inadvertent snapping of the protruding back piece.
Problems:
WARNING: "Lens Error" Problem! (On two separate units.)
Major problem: Here is why we eventually decided not to go with this camera:
on two units in a row, after several days of use for the first, and after two
weeks of use on the second, we eventually got a "Lens Error" readout on the
LCD in white text against a black screen, and the camera either would not fire
up at all, or would bring up the live LCD but never focus lock on anything
inside or outside. The green focus lock light simply would keep blinking and
never go steady.
Now this "lens error" result on two different units could have been user
induced, but I really do not think so. We have owned many cameras,
including many digital cameras. However, I would want to say that one
element to keep in mind is that the lens barrel of this Casio unit is almost all
the way to the left edge of the camera. Inevitably, when you hold the camera
with two hands, one of the fingers of the left hand will overlap onto the front
left edge of the unit, which, in fact, puts a portion of the finger on top of the
edge of the extending lens barrel, either slowing its extension outward or
aborting the extension process altogether. Even when you instantly jerk your
finger away instinctively when the barrel rides the edge of your finger, you still
have affected or interrupted the barrel extension process. Would these minor
incidents induce the lens error? Perhaps. If so, though, that would be a most
delicate mechanism that could afford no interruption whatsoever.
This problem was never reported in the reviews, and no user has reported this
problem that I am aware of, so I feel completely alone in this observation.
Perhaps we got the only two units in existence that would do this. Perhaps
our finger over the edge once or twice did both units in--but that would be
more of a design flaw than true user error, in my opinion. But I still feel
obligated to report exactly what our experience was. Curiously, my camera
shop had just picked up the Casio line, having held off for a few years not
trusting the name brand, but thought they would give the line a chance,
having followed Casio's maturing development and the reviews online. They
are mostly Nikon and Canon and serious photography. They are now on the
bubble about Casio since I have brought back two units with the same
malfunction that they have confirmed in the shop.
Minor problem: no connecting ports. This absence of ports was made clear in
the reviews. The camera body has no connection ports for USB, AV out, or
battery charge. Instead, your only connection to the outside world is the
docking station. I thought I could put up with this terrible decision on Casio's
part. However, I found myself many times extremely frustrated not having
these normal ports, for many practical reasons. I really do not think in the
future I will ever try to put up with a camera that does not have its own
connecting ports somewhere on the camera body itself.
My wife and I both liked the little Casio on many counts, but, with regret, we
have decided not to go with this unit at this time. I just cannot deal with the
worry of being off overseas and suddenly having a camera go inexplicably into
a "lens error" death.
shoot photographer, but really has a natural eye for aesthetic composition as
well as catching very nice moments of spontaneity in people pictures. She
needed a replacement for her Minolta G500, which took excellent pictures, but
was real frustrating to use in terms of the small LCD and an unbelievably
cryptic menu system. We are preparing to go overseas, and she needed a
camera that was pursable, easy to use, with simple and intuitive menus, large
LCD, large pixel count for me to have cropping room, good movie feature,
and an optical viewfinder (she actually uses this, even though tiny on these
small cameras, especially in low light--just her preference). Ideally, the camera
would include some features that I could tease around with.
We both found this Casio unit every bit as nice to use as anticipated and could
confirm most of what has been reported in the reviews, and as have users who
have posted here. The camera was a lightweight charmer from the moment
you take it out of the box. Here are some nice impressions:
(1) The large LCD is great, even if not enough pixels. Besides, you get better
battery life--a tradeoff I think worthwhile.
(2) Talking about battery life, the unit was a very good performer. We still
would have gone with a spare battery, though, as is my habit with all
proprietary battery systems.
(3) The menu system is a breeze, a pleasure to work with. No manual needed--
really. Self-explanatory text and icons actually teach you what techniques are
used to create various preset scenes. My wife actually picked up some
photographic insight from these descriptive text boxes.
(4) The movie mode is stunningly clean and impressive for a camera of this
price point and market. The big letdown on movies, which I already knew
from reviews, was that QuickTime could not read the particular AVI video
codec, so all my Mac stuff (QT Pro, iMovie, etc.) could not read or edit the
video stream the camera produced. Workarounds posted on various threads
are cumbersome and do not work flawlessly, some even introducing a tad of
noise--very frustrating when starting with such a clean original file.
(5) Auto white balance was acceptable in most stills, even good in video.
Tungsten had to be corrected regularly, but no unit in this price range and
market is out there where this is not true.
On the downside, we did have problems on occasion with low-light focus,
camera blur, and a few picture quality issues, most annoyingly in saturation.
You can bring saturation down in the camera's own adjustable settings, but I
found -2 sometimes still not enough. (Good gosh Casio--does the real world
really look that saturated to you? So garrish as to be almost cartoonish in
character!)
Another minor complaint is that the price point is still too high for a point and
shoot, even with its capabilities, simply because the competition in this point
and shoot market is brutal. This unit is not necessarily a dollar-for-dollar "best
buy," depending on how important certain factors are to you. For me, the lack
of ports was much more frustrating than I had anticipated. That is, when you
keep in mind that the camera has no connection ports whatsoever on the
camera body, as most other competing cameras do, then you are forced to
knock down the evaluation of the "features" set. The docking station, though
light-weight plastic, is oddly shaped, so hard to pack. The constant fear is
inadvertent snapping of the protruding back piece.
Problems:
WARNING: "Lens Error" Problem! (On two separate units.)
Major problem: Here is why we eventually decided not to go with this camera:
on two units in a row, after several days of use for the first, and after two
weeks of use on the second, we eventually got a "Lens Error" readout on the
LCD in white text against a black screen, and the camera either would not fire
up at all, or would bring up the live LCD but never focus lock on anything
inside or outside. The green focus lock light simply would keep blinking and
never go steady.
Now this "lens error" result on two different units could have been user
induced, but I really do not think so. We have owned many cameras,
including many digital cameras. However, I would want to say that one
element to keep in mind is that the lens barrel of this Casio unit is almost all
the way to the left edge of the camera. Inevitably, when you hold the camera
with two hands, one of the fingers of the left hand will overlap onto the front
left edge of the unit, which, in fact, puts a portion of the finger on top of the
edge of the extending lens barrel, either slowing its extension outward or
aborting the extension process altogether. Even when you instantly jerk your
finger away instinctively when the barrel rides the edge of your finger, you still
have affected or interrupted the barrel extension process. Would these minor
incidents induce the lens error? Perhaps. If so, though, that would be a most
delicate mechanism that could afford no interruption whatsoever.
This problem was never reported in the reviews, and no user has reported this
problem that I am aware of, so I feel completely alone in this observation.
Perhaps we got the only two units in existence that would do this. Perhaps
our finger over the edge once or twice did both units in--but that would be
more of a design flaw than true user error, in my opinion. But I still feel
obligated to report exactly what our experience was. Curiously, my camera
shop had just picked up the Casio line, having held off for a few years not
trusting the name brand, but thought they would give the line a chance,
having followed Casio's maturing development and the reviews online. They
are mostly Nikon and Canon and serious photography. They are now on the
bubble about Casio since I have brought back two units with the same
malfunction that they have confirmed in the shop.
Minor problem: no connecting ports. This absence of ports was made clear in
the reviews. The camera body has no connection ports for USB, AV out, or
battery charge. Instead, your only connection to the outside world is the
docking station. I thought I could put up with this terrible decision on Casio's
part. However, I found myself many times extremely frustrated not having
these normal ports, for many practical reasons. I really do not think in the
future I will ever try to put up with a camera that does not have its own
connecting ports somewhere on the camera body itself.
My wife and I both liked the little Casio on many counts, but, with regret, we
have decided not to go with this unit at this time. I just cannot deal with the
worry of being off overseas and suddenly having a camera go inexplicably into
a "lens error" death.