Reviews
Casio
Exilim Pro EX-P700
Latest Exilim is larger but full of tricks
If
you've gotten used to thinking of Casio Xilims as little cameras
that you can slip into your pocket (which was the point of their
original ad campaign, complete with a model wearing slinky leather
jeans) the EX-P700 is going to force you to rethink the line,
unless your idea of a supermodel includes baggy cargo jeans. The
truth is that the ãProä designation doesn't lie, and this camera
would be as much at home photographing models as hanging from
their wrists. Combined with some elegant engineering and a host
of intelligent features, whether you're an amateur or pro, this
camera offers help for the one and creative flexibility for the
other.
As
soon as it showed up here, we tore open the box and turned the
camera on÷it did the same for us. The 2-inch LCD display presents
you with a wealth of information, including real time color channel
analysis and an innovative circular display that shows both range
and depth of field. At first glance, it looks like a cross between
the distance ranging binoculars that Luke Skywalker used on Tatooine
and the periscope display from Das Boot, but it turns out to be
really useful and easy to interpret÷if you read the instructions.
The
P700 is essentially the same camera as the P600, with a few notable
exceptions. The biggest being the new 7.2 million-pixel CCD sensor,
but there are others worth noting, like ãFlash Assist,ä on the
fly image processing that compensates for underexposure in areas
the flash can't reach, ãAuto Macroä and ãBusiness Shot,ä which
simulates an architectural lens, distorting images taken at an
angle so that they look as though they were taken straight on.
That's especially useful when taking pictures of buildings, which
appear to taper toward the top due to perspective. The 4x lens
is from Canon. They make lenses for a number of other manufacturers.
Though we didn't conduct rigorous optical tests, the images we've
taken, and others we've seen, look good to us. The optics here
probably match anything in its class, but the test I'd like to
conduct would be against a DSLR, if only to make me feel better
about having more megapixels in a ãpocketä camera than in my Semi-Pro
DSLR.
The
camera starts up in about two seconds. Its exposure/focus lock
seemed gratifyingly fast. I'd say it took less than a second in
the worst case to get a ãhalf-lockä where the camera is ready
to fire. From that position, to the time it actually took to take
an image is promised in the .1 second range. Fast enough for us.
The circular focus ring display in the LCD is novel ö not only
does it show how far away the focus point is, but it shows the
depth of field over which your image will stay in focus. This
graphical display includes icons for exposure, f-stop, and speed,
and it creates a histogram showing red, green and blue channels
for whatever the LCD is displaying. There are a lot of things
built into the camera to help you out, from the picture icons
displaying 27 different camera setups ö you select the image closest
to what you want and the camera does the rest. The autofocus selects
the best of its seven focus points, or you can override it to
choose the one you want.
Playback
and image finding is easy, thanks to two nice features. First,
there's the ãcalendarä view, which shows a thumbnail of the first
image taken on each day of the month displayed in each day's block.
And there's also a high speed playback, which zips images by at
0.1 seconds each so you can find one shot among many.
You
get a full remote control with the camera, so you can just set
it up and shoot long exposures or shots of yourself without introducing
vibration to the image. Or you can use the ãtriple self timerä
to record three consecutive images, letting you pick the one you
like without having to run back and forth to the camera.
The
P700 does a lot of thinking about the light in your pictures,
reducing the noise in low light shots, boosting the light in dim
areas of flash shots, and offering a dizzying array of auto-bracketing
options, not just for exposure levels, but for different camera
settings altogether. Casio opted for a wide ISO range, from 80-640,
using automatic noise reduction to achieve the higher setting.
You'll pay for that with some image sharpness, and you can't turn
it off. It's a fair trade, but offering a manual setting wouldn't
have cost anything extra.
Memory
for the camera is SD/MMC, and the camera comes with 8.9MB of onboard
memory of its own. That's enough for two full resolution jpgs
at the fine setting or eight at the ãeconomyä mode. Power comes
from a lithium ion battery rated at about 100 minutes of operation
using the display. The US model charger has my favorite feature
ö fold flat plugs that minimize its size.
There
are also audio clips, movie clips, image coupling (where you join
two images together in the camera) Direct Printing, Image Roulette
and more. It might take you a while to explore everything the
P700 has to offer, but you should have plenty of fun doing it.
öErnest
Lilley
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