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Casio Digital Cameras
Home > Digital Camera Reviews > Casio Digital Cameras
Casio EXILIM EX-F1 Digital Camera Review
by Steve Morgenstern
Published on July 23, 2008
Model Design / Appearance (7.50)
This is one handsome camera, with an elegantly curved body that seems to be swooping forward toward your next photographic adventure. Of course, that impressive-looking 12x lens is part of the appeal, but we admire the way the glass has been integrated into the overall design to create a cohesive look. Even the few shiny flourishes, including the glossy panel on the top right of the camera and the button panel on the left, behind the lens, are fun highlights rather than intrusive design interruptions.
Size / Portability (5.50)
The EX-F1 is a substantial piece of hardware, at 5.03" x 3.13" x 5.1" (127.7 x 79.6 x 130.1 mm) and a hefty 23.67 oz. (671 g.) without the battery. It may not have interchangeable lenses, but in shape and size it might as well be a digital SLR, meaning portability is not going to be this camera's strong suit, even compared to other ultra-zoom models. The Olympus SP-570 UZ, for example, with its 20x optical zoom, weighs just 15.7 oz. (445 g.).
Handling Ability (6.00)
Coming to grips with the EX-F1 requires some comfort compromises. The right-side hand grip protrudes roughly an inch and a quarter from the camera body. If you have large hands, that's enough to curl your fingers tightly around the grip, just touching the camera body between the grip and lens, shutter finger well positioned for stills, thumb securely on a dimpled area just right of the movie-mode shutter. In fact, one-handed shooting is very practical with this model, especially when using the LCD rather than the EVF for lining up your shots. Go for the two-handed grasp, though, and you may find finger traffic congestion sets in. Cradle the lens with your left hand and your fingers try to curl into the same indent where your right hand is holding the grip. We found the best two-handed hold required a little delicacy on the left side, basically crooking your index finger and resting the barrel on that. With a little practice this worked just fine, but it did take some fiddling to find that comfort zone, and it's hardly intuitive.
The EX-F1 is comfortable for one-handed shooting,
but a two-handed grip can be cramped..
Control Button / Dial Positioning / Size (8.25)
Even when you've found a comfortable grip, there's still the nagging problem of that movie shutter positioned on the back of the camera. After working with the EX-F1 for weeks we still hit that button accidentally far too often, sometimes when trying to shoot stills, sometimes just when carrying the camera around. Somebody at Casio made the design decision that being able to choose between shooting movies and shooting stills using separate shutters, without going through the extra step of changing modes with a menu or button selection, was the way to go. And yes, this arrangement does open up the possibility of shooting stills while recording movies. We just wish they'd found a better spot for the movie shutter – maybe over on the left side, where three buttons already find their home – so we wouldn't end up with quite so much video footage of our desktop, or the sidewalk, or the inside of the lens cap.
Other than that snafu, the controls are well designed and readily accessible. Very few buttons serve dual purposes, which makes the typical squinting for blue labels on a black camera body unnecessary. The combination four-way controller/ control dial on the back of the camera is a clever spin (literally) on the standard control scheme. For most operations, we still found ourselves pushing the controller sides up or down, left or right for most operations. However, when you want to whiz quickly through photos in playback mode, the control dial is a much faster solution. We like having this option, and appreciate the intuitive way it works.
The Function Ring around the lens barrel is another well-designed feature. It looks and feels like the zoom control of an SLR lens, and can be used for that purpose, but it’s actually a programmable control that can be assigned to zoom, or manual focus, or changing the continuous shutter speed setting on the fly.
The combination of a central 4-way controller surrounded by a
spinning circular wheel proved very efficient.
Menu (7.50)
There are separate sets of menus for Play and Record mode, which is a mixed blessing: it keeps the display simple, but it does mean you can't change all the settings you might like in one place. In addition to the menus that take over the screen when you press the MENU button, the record mode for stills and movies also offers an always-on Control Panel strip menu down the right side of the screen that keeps frequently used adjustments, such as flash setting, ISO and white balance readily available. It's an arrangement that works very well in practice, since you never have to hunt for a buried menu setting or a particular button to make day-to-day adjustments while shooting.
The on-screen menu displays are well organized and easy to read, with white text on a gray background and a bright red highlight to indicate your position in the menu structure. A navigational problem does comes up when you want to move between two on-screen menu sections – from REC to Quality to Set Up while shooting, for example, Pressing right or left on the four-way controller opens the options for the item that's currently highlighted, but doesn't move you between menus. Instead you have to maneuver the highlight all the way to the top of a column before you can move between sections, which can be time-consuming.
Another navigational oddity comes when choosing from a sub-menu, such as the Anti-Shake setting or adjusting flash intensity. The instinctive way to do this is to highlight your selection and then press the SET button in the middle of the four-way controller. That works fine, but it also closes the menu system, when you may well want to make additional settings. To stay in the menu system and make more changes you're expected to simply highlight your submenu choice, then move left using the four-way controller to return to the previous menu. Getting used to this is a minor annoyance, granted, but the number of times we grunted a Homer Simpson "D'oh!" during testing because the menu screen had disappeared unexpectedly indicates this wasn't the best design choice.
Control Panel Menu
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| Image Size |
6M, 3:2, 16:9, 4M, 3M, 2M, VGA |
| Flash |
Auto Flash, Flash Off, Flash On, Red Eye Reduction, External Flash |
| ISO Sensitivity |
Auto, 100, 200, 400, 800, 1600 |
| White Balance |
Auto WB, Daylight, Overcast, Shade, DayWhite Fluorescent, Daylight Fluorescent, Tungsten, Manual WB |
| Exposure Compensation |
-2 to +2 in 1/3EV increments |
| Metering |
Multi, Center Weighted, Spot |
| AF Area |
Spot, Free, Tracking |
| Recording Light |
On, Off |
| Display Time |
Time, Date |
Record Mode Menu
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| Self Timer |
Off, 2 sec, 10 sec, three-shot sequence |
| AF Assist Light |
On, Off |
| Anti-Shake |
Auto, Camera AS, Image AS, Demo, Off |
| Face Detection |
On, Off |
| Continuous AF |
On, Off |
| AE/AF Lock |
AE Lock, AF Lock, AE/AF Lock |
| AE Bracketing |
3 or 5 shots, increments in 1/3EV |
| WB Bracketing |
3 or 5 shots, color temperature increments |
| Focus Bracketing |
3 or 5 shots, distance increments |
| Ring Setup |
CS fps, Zoom, Focus, Off |
| Save CS Images |
Normal (batch), Select and Save, Always Ask |
| Digital Zoom |
On, Off |
| Quick Shutter |
On, Off |
| Review |
On, Off |
| Grid |
On, Off |
| Memory |
Flash, Self-timer, Flash Intensity, Digital Zoom, MF Position, Zoom Position |
| Quality |
| Still Image Quality |
Fine, Normal, Economy |
| HD Video Quality |
FHD (1920x1080, 60fps), HD (1280x720, 30 fps) |
| HS Video Speed |
300 fps, 600 fps, 1200 fps, 30-300 fps |
| Dynamic Range |
Expand +2, Expand +1, Off |
| Flash Intensity |
-2, to +2 in 1/3EV increments |
| Flash Assist |
Auto, Off |
| Color Filter |
Off, B/W, Sepia, Red, Green, Blue, Yellow, Pink, Purple |
| Sharpness |
+2, +1, 0, -1, -2 |
| Saturation |
+2, +1, 0, -1, -2 |
| Contrast |
+2, +1, 0, -1, -2 |
| Setup |
| Screen |
Auto 2, Auto 1, +2, +1, 0, -1 |
| EVF Brightness |
0, +1, +2 |
| Sounds |
Startup, Half Shutter, Shutter, Operation (each with 5 sounds and off), Operation Volume, Playback Volume (each with 7 levels) |
| File No. |
Continue, Reset |
| World Time |
Home, World |
| Timestamp |
Date, Date & Time, Off |
| Adjust |
Set date and time, 12- or 24-hour format |
| Date Style |
YY/MM/DD, DD/MM/YY, MM/DD/YY |
| Language |
16 languages including English, Spanish, French, Italian, Portuguese, Japanese, Chinese (Mandarin), Chinese (Cantonese), Korean, Finish, Norwegian, Swedish, Dutch, Polish, Czech, Hungarian |
| Sleep |
30 sec, 1 min, 2 min, Off |
| Auto Power Off |
2 min, 5 min, 10 min |
| REC/PLAY |
Power On, Power On/Off, Disable |
| LCD Priority |
On, Off |
| USB |
Mass Storage, PTP (PictBridge) |
| Video Out |
NSTC 4:3, NTSC 16:9, PAL 4:3, PAL 16:9 |
| HDMI Output |
Auto, 1080i, 480p, 576p |
| Format |
Format, Cancel |
| Reset |
Reset, Cancel |
Play Mode Menu
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| Slideshow |
Start, Images (All Images, All Images Except Burst, Stills Only, Videos Only, One Image), Time (1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 10, 15, 30, 60 min), Interval (1-30 sec, Max), Effect (Pattern 1-5, Off), Cancel |
| MOTION PRINT |
9 frames, 1 frame, Cancel |
| Movie Editing |
Cut Beginning, Cut Middle, Cut End, Cancel |
| White Balance |
Daylight, Overcast, Shade, DayWhite Fluorescent, Daylight Fluorescent, Tungsten, Cancel |
| Brightness |
+2, +1, 0, -1, -2 |
| DPOF Printing |
Select Images (0-99 copies), All Images (0-99 copies), Date stamping On / Off |
| Protect |
On, All Files, Cancel |
| Rotation |
Rotate, Cancel |
| Resize |
3M (2048x1536), 2M (1600x1200), VGA (640x480), Cancel |
| Trimming |
Size with zoom control, move crop area with four-way controller, SET to select |
| Copy |
Built-in to Card, Card to Built-in, Cancel |
| Divide Group |
Divide All Groups, Divide, Cancel |
| Display Layout |
Wide, Normal |
| Set Up |
| Same as Record Mode (see above) |
Ease of Use (5.75)
This is a relatively complex camera, with its multitude of modes and capabilities, many of which have never been seen before. In fact, it takes a 185-page manual to explain it all, which unfortunately is provided only as a PDF file and not a printed document. We’re not big fans of grinding up trees unnecessarily, but in this case the manual is required to take full advantage of your $1000 purchase, and computer-based manuals don’t travel well when you take your camera out to shoot. And if you’re going to create a 185-page manual, wouldn’t it make sense to include an index?
Beyond documentation issues, using the EX-F1 is pretty easy once you get the hang of it. The dual control-dial system on top of the camera – one for exposure modes, one for shooting modes – organizes choices well. Similarly, the three-position selector around the movie shutter makes changing between standard movie, high-def movie and high-speed movie modes crystal clear.
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