Reviews
Casio
EX-Z750
Tiny, yet brimming with features and innovation
I've
noticed that I'm becoming something of an expert on Casio's line
of ãcardä cameras. I can't help myself; I just love them. And
the company keeps cranking out new and improved models at an astonishing
rate. Often a new model or two arrive on my desk the day I finish
my last Casio review for one of Handheld's sister publications.
Fortunately, the retail distribution channels work a little slower,
so the models I review are usually still available when our magazine
ships. But somebody is putting something in the water cooler at
Casio's design department ÷ these people obviously never sleep.
I've
written many times about the recent emergence of the thin-zoom
form factor and how they have taken over the market. Casio pioneered
this category back in 2002/2003 with their first card cameras,
the 2-megapixel S1 fixed focal length camera followed by the 3.2
megapixel Z3 with a zoom lens. From the success of those products,
the company went on to develop a whole array of models based on
them, increasing resolution, performance, and battery life. Amazingly,
they stayed just as tiny and pocket-friendly as the early designs.
And
now we have the EX-Z750, offering a staggering 7.2 megapixels
resolution , a (comparatively) huge 2.5-inch display, high-quality
MPEG4 640x480 pixel movies recorded at 30 frames per second, a
handy new dock design that sports an audio/video-out port for
connecting to your home theater, and a truly impressive array
of innovative new capture modes and rather comprehensive in-camera
editing features.
Having
a full 7.2 megapixels on tap is great, but it's also a bit of
a mixed blessing. That's because the files are quite large. Fine
resolution JPEGs are around 4.3 megabytes, while CMYK TIFF versions
can be as large as 27 megabytes. The upside of having all those
many pixels, of course, is that you have plenty of room to crop
without losing detail. If you've got a computer with decent processing
speed and a large hard drive, you'll love it. And you'll need
to spend another couple of C-notes on a pair of 1GB SecureDigital
cards. The Z750 doesn't ship with one and anything smaller with
a 7.2 megapixel camera will just frustrate you.
To
see the impact of the very high pixel count, I took photos of
the badge on my MINI Cooper S with both the Z750 and Casio's ãoldä
5 megapixel Z55, using a tripod. I found the size difference to
be dramatically apparent (and also found that the different imager
on the two cameras produced slightly different fields of view÷
something to keep in mind when you decide on a camera).
As
the day was extremely sunny and the sun straight overhead, I took
a wide shot of my car's front end to see if I could tease out
some of the dreaded purple fringing÷those hideous purple and sometimes
green backdrop fringes you get with many digital cameras in areas
of high contrast. I zoomed in to 500% in Photoshop and found almost
none, and this was an extremely high contrast situation.
Overall
image quality from this camera is excellent for its class, if
a bit on the overly saturated side. This can easily be minimized
if you find your results a bit too Disney for your taste.
The
Casio Z750 offers a boatload of features for moviemakers. The
MPEG4 quality is high. You can now use Casio's Best Shot mode
with movies, making it easy to adjust to challenging lighting
situations. the Past Movie function lest you capture five seconds
of motion before a still shot is taken, and the Short Movie setting
lets you create an eight second movie centered on a still in the
middle. You can use Motion Print to select up to eight frame to
convert to a still photo, and Movie Playback Zoom lets you zoom
in and move around within a playing movie. They've even included
three editing modes to eliminate unwanted ãfootage.ä When your
cinematographic masterpiece is done, you can pop the camera in
its dock and use the new AV out jack to connect it directly to
your home theater gear.
With
all this functionality, still Casio managed to make the X750 even
slimmer than its predecessors by beveling the edges of the case.
Are there any flaws in this camera? Not many. The optical viewfinder
is ridiculously tiny, but it works well enough. I had no trouble
using the LCD display as a viewfinder in direct sunshine, so I
doubt I'll ever need the optical one anyway.
The
Z750 is arguably the best thin-zoom yet from Casio. It's a gleaming
marvel of miniaturization, feature innovation, and appealing user
interface design.
öDavid MacNeill
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