The go anywhere camera! (Casio Exilim Card EX-S100)

Member Name: burgess

Product:	Casio Exilim Card EX-S100
Date:	01/06/05 (318 review reads)
Rating:

Advantages: Easy to use, Feature packed

Disadvantages: Can be hard to find in shops, Fiddly to use at times

I have been using digital cameras since 1995 and remember the £800 Olympus Camedia models that have less features than the £50 models now available. As cameras have improved, two factors have continued to nag me about digital cameras. Firstly the battery life and secondly the size. The size issue hasn’t been so much of an issue, but as a computer user who wants a camera with me at all times, I have found the alternatives have been to rely on the relatively low quality of the camera on my phone or carry a digital camera in one pocket and at least one spare set of batteries in another pocket.

This is where the Casio Exilim EX S100 comes in. It is a 3.2 mega pixel camera that is marginally larger than a credit card at just 88mm x 57mm, and with a depth of less than a mobile phone at just 16.7mm (at the widest part when powered off.). When powered on the lens extends to make the camera a total of 30mm deep, yes a camera this small can have an optical zoom! The tiny dimensions don’t make the camera feel like a toy though. The camera is 113g (excluding battery, 129g including battery) of metal (no silver coloured plastic casing, except for battery trap door). In use the camera feels surprisingly comfortable to use. There is no optical viewfinder on this camera, so the LCD screen is in permanent use. The screen is large at over 5cm (diagonally) visible. The camera has 3 buttons to switch it on from. The conventional power button is a recessed switch on top, but on the back you have a camera icon button (that selects camera mode) and a play icon button (that selects playback mode). Either of these buttons can be used to switch the camera on too. They can also be programmed to switch the camera off too. Incidentally the camera ‘boots’ up remarkably fast and is always ready for action. The camera uses a lithium ion rechargeable battery, as found in mobile phones and lasts for about 90-150 minutes of continuous use, according to the manual. The figures quoted are difficult to decipher into real use. The 90 minutes is if you have camera on continuously and take a photo every 10 seconds! I find that on one full charge, you can happily take the camera away for a few days and take 100 photos or so. I haven’t had opportunity to use it for a longer period yet, but I’m going to get a spare battery just in case. The camera has 9.3Mb of memory built in, which is good 5 images at top quality, top resolution (2048x1536, fine) or 94 images at 640x480 on economy mode. The camera has a SD/MMC card slot. Using the card switches off the internal memory. You can copy the images on the internal memory to the card, but you can’t use both types of memory together. The camera has optical zoom of 2.8x and digital zoom of 4x, giving a total zoom of 11.2x, which I am reliably informed is the equivalent of have a zoom of 36-102 on a conventional 35mm camera.

In the past, I’ve been use to cameras with thumbwheels to select different modes such as automatic, manual, video, audio and playback, so this camera can be a little fiddly to use as you have the buttons to select playback or record (camera mode) and then you have to select the menu to change between modes or override the automatic exposure, aperture and white balance settings. This is not a problem, but it depends what you are use to and this camera is really good at being a point and click camera. Apart from taking photos at resolutions from 640x480 up to 2048x1536 (including a 3:2 aspect resolution of 2048x1360), this camera can take video with audio at 320x240, be used as a monoaural voice recorder and also take audio snapshot, which is a photo with a 30 second voice clip that can be added directly after taking the photo. Another feature which was designed to pacify whingers like me is Bestshot. Bestshot is a series of 23 selectable image settings. These include optimal settings for portrait, scenery, portrait with scenery, night scene, fireworks, pets, monochrome, sepia, all of which you would find on many other cameras as Programmed AE settings. Some Bestshots that you may not find elsewhere include Preshot, where you can take a photo of a background and then you can go stand in the shot, whilst someone else takes your photograph, using the preshot as a ghosted template for how you want the shot composed. The preshot doesn’t form part of the finished shot, but gives the other person an indication of how you want the shot frame. Also there is a something called a coupling shot which is a similar idea, but it allows you and a friend to take a photograph that you both appear in. Collection allows you to take photographs of a collection of objects (such as model cars) and the screen has gridlines and shapes to help ensure everything is framed nicely. Then there is a mode for photographing text and modes for photographing whiteboards and business cards which ensure that the lines on the subject matter appear flat and not sloping. You can also create a user defined Bestshots by simply selecting an image on the camera that has the settings that you want to use and storing that. You can have 999 user defined Bestshots and these are stored on the camera’s built in memory.

The camera comes with a cradle that has a power lead and a USB lead attached, so it is a matter of sticking it on the cradle and it is charges up and then pressing the USB button to start the process of transferring the images. If you install the bundled Photoloader software, it automatically transfers the images to your computer and creates webpages so you have an chronological album in the form of a website on your hard drive. It is a nice touch & has options to print images, start a slideshow or look at the details of a photo (IE ISO, Exposure, Flash, Resolution, Date, etc). Because I am an experience user and like to just copy the images to my computer, manipulate them and put them in my photo directory, I found the Photoloader a little too much and reverted to using the standard USB driver that shows the camera as an extra disk on My Computer. The other software that comes with the camera is Photohands, which is basically a photoshop type of program but I didn’t investigate this as I already use Paintshop Pro instead.

In conclusion, the Casio Exilim EX S100 Card Camera offers a lot in one very slender package. If you want a camera to use as a ‘happy snapper’, then this camera will happily provide you with a carefree easy to use experience. If you want a camera that lets you do lots of creative things and let you tweak lots of settings to the point of being called an anorak by those poor souls that don’t understand you, this camera will also let you do that without looking too obvious. Even the documentation works on two levels. You get a printed ‘basic reference’ guide, giving you 16 pages of instructions in each of the 7 European languages and then on the CD ROM you get a 207 page full ‘user guide’ in each language. Also worthy of mentioning is Casio’s dedicated Exilim camera range website www.exilim.co.uk, which is very helpful.

I purchased my camera May 2005 from Asda, Norwich for £164.84 and was also given a free 64Mb SD Card and official Exilim Alumium case worth £20.

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