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Casio EXILIM EX-F1 Digital Camera Review

by Steve Morgenstern
Published on July 23, 2008

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Viewfinder (1.75)
The electronic viewfinder, an 0.2-inch display with 201,000-dot resolution, appears large and clear enough, though we did find it difficult to see the entire screen at once while wearing glasses. The edges of the eyecup obstructed the view, creating a kind of tunnel vision that cut off the top and bottom, left and right edges. This is particularly troublesome since all of the menus appear in a strip at the far right side of the display. Without glasses, the problem disappears, but Lasik surgery shouldn't be required to use a camera properly.

On the plus side, viewfinder brightness can be adjusted to one of three levels based on user preference, and the settings make a noticeable difference. Another nice touch: you can overlay a nine-section grid over the shooting display, in the viewfinder or the LCD screen (through a setup menu choice), to help with horizontal and vertical alignment while shooting.


The EVF is bright enough, but hard to use with glasses on.

LCD Screen (6.25)
The 2.8-inch LCD screen, with 959 x 240 resolution (230,160-dots total) provides an accurate view when it comes to image framing and color reproduction. It does get the grainy jitters when working in low light, but not enough to interfere with framing your shot. The screen can be set to four different brightness levels, either automatically (the camera senses ambient light and adjusts accordingly) or manually. We found the +1 setting was a good indoor/outdoor choice. It does become difficult to judge colors on screen when shooting in bright light, but seeing what you’re shooting is possible even in the summer glare.


Clear legible type with good color highlighting
make the LCD easy to read.

Flash (8.50)
The flash pops up automatically when settings require it. There is no physical button you can press to pop up the flash, or engage flash mode. This is unfortunate, since having to go through the on-screen menu is slower than simply pushing a flash button or lifting the flash into position, the systems used in most consumer-level SLRs with built-in flash. The height of the flash when engaged, at a full two inches above the camera body, is a big plus when it comes to avoiding red-eye when shooting in darkened rooms. While the flash pops up automatically, you’ll have to lower it by hand.

Casio gives the flash range as 1.6 to 22 feet (0.5 m to 6.7 m) at the widest angle setting, and 3.6 to 12.8 feet (1.1 m to 3.9 m) at the furthest telephoto. As expected, the flash can’t achieve the same range when shooting in continuous mode, at up to 7 frames per second. During continuous shooting the flash range is cut roughly in half, which is still impressive performance compared to the built-in flash in any other camera we’ve tested.

The red lamp next to the viewfinder flashes when the flash is recharging. If you’re shooting with flash, you’re locked out of taking a photo until the charge is complete. According to Casio, recharging the flash can take up to 9 seconds with a fully charged battery depending on temperature, but during our testing we never waited more than a second or two.

There are five flash settings: Auto flash, Flash off, Flash on, Red Eye Reduction and External Flash. Flash intensity can be set to 13 different levels, from -2.0EV to +2.0EV, in 1/3EV increments.

For shooting movies, or stills at faster than 7 frames per second, the LED light can be turned on as a source of constant illumination. Pressing the bottom of the four-way controller turns the LED on and off while in movie mode, though this won’t work while shooting high-speed movies.

Flash assist can be turned on when a subject is not receiving adequate illumination in a dark setting. This feature uses an image processing algorithm to boost the brightness of the areas that are bright, but not as bright as they would be in a properly exposed image. Of course, this kind of processing noticeably increases image noise. We prefer tweaking the exposure in an image editing program, though point-and-shooters may be satisfied capturing an acceptable photo in difficult conditions with flash assist.

There is also an industry-standard hot shoe on top of the camera for connecting an external flash. You have to manually select External Flash (by pushing the four-way controller to the right) to avoid having the built-in flash pop up automatically, which is inconvenient.


A standard photo flash is positioned above
an LCD lamp that provides continuous illumination.

Zoom Lens (7.00)
The EX-F1 doesn’t have that long snout up front for looks alone – it incorporates a powerful 12x optical zoom lens that ranges from 7.3mm to 87.6mm (equivalent to 36mm-432mm for a 35mm camera). At f/2.7 the lens is reasonably fast at the wide setting, though the maximum aperture plunges to f/7.3 at the full zoom setting, requiring plenty of illumination to take a sharp photo. The lens consists of 12 elements in 9 groups, including one aspherical lens. Image stabilization is handled through shifting the internal light sensor rather than optical lens elements.


The EX-F1 zoom is equivalent to a 36-432mm lens on a 35mm camera.

A 4x digital zoom multiplier is also available, making the maximum theoretical zoom to 48x. Ordinarily, we just disable the digital zoom option when setting up a camera and leave it off. However, if you are shooting at 4 megapixels or lower with the EX-F1, you can employ digital zoom without lowering image quality, since the system can use a smaller pixel area in the middle of the sensor, producing a higher apparent zoom, without lowering final resolution. This can be useful when shooting movies, which are captured at lower resolutions than stills.

 
Three shots of the statue atop Grand Central Station, taken from precisely the same spot.

By default, the zoom lens is controlled using a side-to-side switch located around the shutter button. This zoom control is reasonably smooth and precise for a point-and-shoot camera, though it does jump unevenly from setting to setting at higher magnifications. We like the fact that, while you zoom, a numerical reading of the 35mm-equivalent zoom lens setting is displayed at the center left of the screen. Another nice feature is the option to program the ring around the lens barrel to work as a zoom control, just the way you'd work with a traditional SLR lens. There is a problem here, though: the ring isn't geared the way a zoom lens would be, meaning you get less zoom movement than you'd expect as you turn. That's great for fine adjustments, but for quickly zooming into the action, the standard zoom lever control is faster.
 
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