In summary
An attractive, well-designed, slimline camera for novice photographers.Available in silver, blue, brown, black and red, Casio’s Exilim EX-Z600 is easily pocketable digicams and offers some handy features for snapshooters. Supplied with a USB cradle/battery charger, it boasts a 2.7-inch Super Bright LCD screen (but no viewfinder) and a fully-retracting, 3x optical zoom lens. Users can call up a rule-of-thirds grid on the LCD along with an intensity/RGB histogram. Multi-point and spot AF modes are provided, the former indicating areas used for focusing. . . [more]
Full review
Available in silver, blue, brown, black and red, Casio’s Exilim EX-Z600 is an easily pocketable digicam and offers some handy features for snapshooters. Supplied with a USB cradle/battery charger, it boasts a 2.7-inch Super Bright LCD screen (but no viewfinder) and a fully-retracting, 3x optical zoom lens. Users can call up a rule-of-thirds grid on the LCD along with an intensity/RGB histogram. Multi-point and spot AF modes are provided, the former indicating areas used for focusing.
Some useful manual controls distinguish the EX-Z600 from most other point-and-shoot digicams. Manual focusing is provided, along with a Pan Focus mode that focuses the lens between 1.2 and 3.5 metres, plus close-up and infinity settings. White balance can also be measured manually and there’s a ‘soft flash’ mode that cuts flash brightness for portraiture plus a rapid flash setting that captures three flash shots in close succession to minimise ‘closed-eyes’ in flash shots.
Thirty-four illustrated BestShot pre-sets are accessible via a dedicated button, among them settings for recording business cards, white boards, text and audio. There’s a handy ‘Collection’ mode for shooting goods for online auctions. An interesting ‘Revive Shot’ mode lets you copy an old photograph and restore its colours. In-camera editing functions include crop, zoom and keystone correction. Movie clips can be recorded with VGA resolution at 30fps.
Images from the test camera were bright, but rather contrasty. Imatest showed most colours to be accurately recorded, although saturation was slightly elevated. Resolution was acceptable at ISO 100 but declined with higher ISO settings. Some lateral chromatic aberration was found at all focal lengths. Flash and white balance performance were both very good.
Capture lag was less than 0.2 seconds and shots were processed very quickly. The high-speed burst mode captured three shots at 0.25 second intervals, while the standard mode recorded at one frame/second. [28]
Specifications
Image sensor: 5.76 x 4.29mm CCD with 6.18 million photosites (6.0 megapixels effective)
Lens: 6.2-18.6mm f2.7-5.2 zoom lens (38-114mm in 35mm format)
Zoom ratio: 3x optical, 4x digital
Dimensions (wxhxd): 90 x 59 x 16.1mm
Weight: 115g (without battery and card)
Image formats: Stills – JPEG (Exif 2.2); Movies AVI (MPEG-4 compliant)/WAV (VGA/QVGA)
Shutter speed range: 4-1/2000 second
Focus system/range: Contrast-detect AF with 9-point multi and spot focusing; range 40 cm to infinity; macro 15-50cm.
Exposure metering/control: Multi-pattern, centre weighted, spot metering; Program AE plus 34 pre-set BestShot modes.
White balance: Auto; Fixed (6 modes); Manual
Flash modes/range (ISO auto): Auto, Flash On, Flash Off, Red Eye Reduction; range 0.4-2.8 metres.
ISO range: Auto, ISO 100, 200, 400 (Max. 1600 with Anti-Shake or High-Sensitivity modes).
Sequence shooting: High-speed – 3 shots at 0.2 fps; Standard – 1 fps.
Storage Media: 8.3MB internal memory plus SD card slot; internal memory holds 2 high-resolution images or up to 57 VGA shots
Viewfinder: n.a.
LCD monitor: 2.2-inch digital TFT colour LCD; 84,960 pixels
Power supply: NP-20 rechargeable lithium-ion battery
Retailers
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Canterbury Northcote
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Australian retailer of Vapex rechargeable batteries offering factory direct prices and fast, free shipping Australia wide.
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Ted’s Cameras
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Big range of cameras and photographic products with stores in most states and online.
Rating
Rating (out of 10):
- Build: 9
- Ease of use: 8.5
- Image quality: 8
- OVERALL: 8.5