Review: Casio EXILIM EX-FC100

I want you to know a cou­ple of things before I start this review. First, I am not a pro­fes­sional pho­tog­ra­pher. I have spent a bit too much money on a DSLR and a nice lens but I had to get them. Second, I sim­ply like tak­ing pho­tos but most of the time I wish I had a smaller cam­era than my Canon 20D. A com­pact cam­era that takes DSLR-like pic­tures seems impos­si­ble to get. I think the new Olympus E-P1 is very promis­ing but is quite expen­sive. With the 17mm that I would get, the total price comes to a whop­ping US$899.99 at Amazon. With that out of the way, I got a chance to review Casio’s EXILIM EX-FC100. Now, I don’t have all the tools to give you detailed spec­i­fi­ca­tions so what I will do is to give you a layman’s review of the EX-FC100. Let’s start with the conclusion.

Conclusion The EX-FC100 is a fine com­pact cam­era if you take pic­tures mostly when there is a lot of light. The HD record fea­ture is pretty good but again only when there is a lot of light. Low-light per­for­mance for both pic­tures and videos is sim­ply ter­ri­ble. There is too much noise. My Canon IXUS 70 (bought it in Korea; in the US is PowerShot SD1000) does a much bet­ter job. The EX-FC100 retails for US$349.99 and can be found on Amazon for US$278.95. With the con­clu­sion out of the way, let’s get into more specifics.

Megapixels The num­ber of pix­els on mod­ern dig­i­tal cam­eras almost do not mat­ter for most users. The EX-FC100 has a 10.29 mil­lion pixel 1/2.3-inch CMOS sen­sor with an effec­tive 9.1 mil­lion pix­els. In terms of res­o­lu­tion that is 3456 x 2592, more than almost any LCD mon­i­tor that is out there. Let’s just put it this way: The EX-FC100 has enough. The images are saved in JPEG for­mat. This cam­era takes HD movies too with a 1280 x 720 res­o­lu­tion at 30fps. The qual­ity is very good as long as you have a lot of light. Ditto for images.

Hi-Speed In the pic­ture above, look closely at the icons sur­round­ing the but­ton with the red dot (the ded­i­cated movie record bot­ton) and you’ll find there is an icon with the let­ters HS on it. If you switch into HS mode, you’re in hi-speed mode. In hi-speed mode, you take videos in 30-210fps, 210fps, 420fps or 1000fps. At 30-210fps the res­o­lu­tion is 480 x 360, at 210fps 480 x 360, at 420fps 224 x 168 and at 1000fps it is 224 x 64. Gets really small the faster it takes.

It’s kind of neat to see micro-movements of my kids. I guess if I was work­ing for Dr. Cal Lightman at The Lightman Group (from the TV series “Lie to me*” on Fox in the US), this would be great tool for ana­lyz­ing whether some­one is lying or not. BTW, I love that show.

The res­o­lu­tion isn’t HD any­more, far from, and you don’t get sound, which for most of us is a must. I didn’t play around with the HS mode too much because to me it was a gim­mick that didn’t have much real world use. Dr. Lightman would dis­agree. But he’s fic­tional so his opin­ion doesn’t count. That ded­i­cated red but­ton to record movie is a great idea. Even my wife thought it was very convenient.

There is another hi-speed mode and it relates to pic­ture tak­ing. The EX-FC100 has a 30 shot-per-second burst rate. You push this but­ton, press the shut­ter but­ton and you get 30 shots in just one sec­ond. Nifty when some­thing is mov­ing really fast, like your kids. But the qual­ity was a bit lack­ing and the res­o­lu­tion gets kicked down to 6 megapix­els, still quite enough.

ETC The LCD is 2.7-inch size so is quite large. Viewing angles are good so you can take pic­tures at dif­fer­ent angles and still be able to see what’s on the LCD. Epson calls it Super Clear LCD and I agree it was quite clear. The EX-FC100 uses SD cards to record but I found it very dif­fi­cult to get the SD card out and I have aver­age fin­gers with above-average dex­ter­ity. This might not apply to guys and gals that are used to tons of fea­tures and tons of but­tons but I found the EX-FC100 to have a bit too many… fea­tures and buttons.

iPhone 3GS It might be weird that I bring up the iPhone 3GS on a review for a com­pact dig­i­tal cam­era, but I think it is a big devel­op­ment that will change the way we think of the iPhone. Full dis­clo­sure: I own an iPhone 3G. I am think­ing of get­ting the 3GS for pre­cisely these rea­sons I will tell you about. The iPhone 3G has a ter­ri­ble cam­era. Barely accept­able. I’m glad Apple improved the cam­era in the 3GS. In the 3GS the cam­era is actu­ally quite good! The user selec­table aut­o­fo­cus is really cool. Of course it is only 3 megapix­els but for the occa­sional print­out and use for the Internet, the images cap­tured on the 3GS is good enough. And the other neat thing is that the 3GS is really good in low-light.

The 3GS can do video with a 640 x 480 res­o­lu­tion at 30fps. Not HD by any stretch of the imag­i­na­tion but the qual­ity is quite good, even in low-light. What I am get­ting at? With the iPhone 3GS you don’t need to carry an addi­tional com­pact dig­i­tal camera–the built-in cam­era is good enough. If you’re seri­ous about get­ting qual­ity pho­tographs you’ll need to invest in some­thing more, like the Olympus I men­tioned at the begin­ning of this review or a full-blown DSLR. But if all you need is to take quick snaps (with GPS tags) and videos, the 3GS is an ele­gant and sim­ple solution.

Here is a list of other sites that have reviewed the EX-FC100: PhotographyBLOG, Trusted Reviews, Infosync World, Digital Camera Info, MacWorld, Steve’s Digicam