What Photo Gear

New York Times resident tech guru David Pogue has published his hands-on with Casio’s very very interesting shooter - the Casio Exilim EX-F1.

The more I read about this camera, the more interesting it gets. Now if I could somehow cough up that $999 street price, I would definitely be in line for one. The high-speed 60 frame-per-second shooting can definitely open up a lot of opportunities that I would’ve otherwise missed with a regular superzoom.

But unfortunately it’s not all good news though, despite the fast shooting speed, the camera seems to be saddled with slow start-up times, and if the EVF is anything like most superzooms, then it can get pretty laggy at times. And David complains about the sluggish lens as well.

The 12X zoom is nice to have, but it’s slow to react. And during video capture, when you turn the lens ring to zoom, it jerks spastically through the zoom range, effectively ruining your shot. The camera has great difficulty changing focus during filming, too.

All in all, this looks to be a step in the right direction for Casio, the price might put off quite a few people, especially since image quality isn’t really anything special, but comparable to other super-zooms - but for those of us who can find value in its shooting speed, it could be worth the pretty hefty investment.

Now if Casio can drop a larger sensor on the EX-F2 with a lens worthy of the shooting speed, without upping the price.. that could be quite something.

From: The New York Times via What Photo Gear

One of the more interesting camera’s announced in this year’s Consumer Electronics Show was the Casio Exilim Pro EX-F1, Casio’s top of the line digital camera, and the first model in their Exilim PRO series of camera’s is now slowly starting to make itself into the shelves of retailers around the world, with appearances in Japan and Sweden so far.

Aside from its 6 megapixel sensor and 12x optical zoom (36mm-432mm) the EX-F1’s claim to fame is its ability to shoot at an astounding 60 frames per second. (60 frames at once, or 5 frames in 12 seconds) as well as be able to shoot full HD videos at 1920×1080 at 60 fps. And Casio has also thrown in an amazing ultra-high speed video capture of 1200 frames per second! (Unfortunately that’s only at a tiny resolution of 336×96 - tiny for sure, but certainly very usable for bloggers and the like)

A video preview, links to sample videos and images after the jump!

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Well, we had the sexy Olympus E3 Print Ad from South Korea last time, so why not a few TV commercials this time. Some of these are pretty funny, while some are a bit more serious, like the Nikon one. I don’t watch TV at all, (yes, really) so if you know of any other awesome camera commercials, let me know in the comments.

First up, here’s one from Agfa:

There’s more after the jump - just hit the Read More link.

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Casio has today announced the Casio Exilim EX-Z9, the latest in their Exilim line of compact camera’s. This 8 megapixel compact has a standard 3x zoom lens (37mm-112mm equivalent,) a 2.7 inch LCD, the YouTube video mode as found on other Casio digital camera’s and of course you get the 23 scene modes, or what Casio refers to as the Best Shot Modes.

The Casio EX-Z9:

• 8.1 Megapixels
• 2.7 inch LCD
• 3x zoom (37mm-112mm equivalent)
• Measures 3.6″ x 2.17″ x .91″
• 23 Best shot modes
• Anti-Shake (ISO boost)
• Comes in Black, Silver, Pink! and Orange!
• Available this month for about $159

I’ve actually been fairly impressed with what Casio is doing with their digital camera’s. They limit themselves to compact, stylish digital camera’s that’s targeted more to the fashion conscious crowd, but most of their digital camera’s are actually pretty good. They’re feature rich, compact, easy to use and priced very competitively. Image quality for most of their digital camera’s are fairly decent compared to similar camera’s. I could find a lot of issues with the quality if I wanted to, but that would mean discounting the fact that their camera’s are targeted to users who just want a camera that takes pictures without having to click half a dozen different dials and buttons.

Full press release after the jump.

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