Casio Exilim EX-FC100

Shooting Modes (13.50)

The EX-FC100 does not have a manual mode, or any priority modes. It does, however, have an absolutely huge number of scene modes. It also has a very nice customization option, where you can assign any photo you’ve taken to the Best Shot menu, and the settings used for that photo will be saved for future use. You can make up to 999 of these, which is really handy.

Auto Mode Features

In autofocus mode, the focus point can be set to spot, free (uses the whole frame), or tracking (which attempts to track moving objects). The focus mode itself can be set to autofocus, macro, pan focus (which has a fixed focal length, depending on zoom setting), infinity, or manual focus.

The EX-FC100 has a face detection mode that can spot up to 10 faces.

The exposure compensation runs ±2EV in 1/3 steps, and there is no bracketing. The EX-FC100 has an exposure compensation tool, unhelpfully called ‘Lighting’, which can be turned on or off. When on, it does pull quite a bit of detail from shadows, but adds noise. There is an example on our Sample Photos page.

The metering can be set to multi, center-weighted or spot.

At wide-angle, the maximum aperture is f/3.6 the minimum f/8.5. At tele it’s f/4.5 to f/10.8. The maximum isn’t very fast, and the minimum isn’t enough to provide a fantastic depth of field for landscape work. There is no way to manually set aperture.

Generally, the shutter speed runs from 4-1/1000 seconds, which isn’t too impressive. But when flicked over to high-speed photography mode, the shutter speed maxes out at an astonishing 1/40000 second exposure. There is no way to manually set shutter speed.

There are three timer settings. 10-second, 2-second, and triple. This last takes three shots after a 10 second delay.

Scene Modes

Casio calls their scene modes ‘Best Shot’ modes, usually abbreviated to the poorly chosen acronym BS. The selection runs as follows: Auto, Portrait, Scenery, Portrait with Scenery, Children, Sports, Pet, Flower, Natural Green, Autumn Leaves, For Youtube, Sundown, High Speed Night Scene, Night Scene Portrait, Fireworks, High Speed Anti Shake, Multi-motion Image, High Speed Best Selection, Move Out CS, Move In CS, Prerecord (Movie), and Register User Scene.

Some of these deserve slightly greater explanation. The High Speed Anti Shake mode is meant to combine multiple images to create one that is relatively free of blurring. This effect is slow to work, and makes noisy images, but seems to function as promised. The Move Out and Move In CS modes let you set up a framed area of a composition, and will start photographing as soon as something moves into (or out of) that area. Multi-motion Image layers multiple images in stages across the photo, a bit like a zoetrope.

Picture Effects (4.50)

The most extensive picture effect selection the Casio has on offer is its Color Filter system, which overlays a color on top of the image. It has red, green, blue, yellow, pink and purple. There’s also sepia and black and white modes. The camera also lets you tweak sharpness, saturation and contrast, all at ±2 steps.

Manual Controls (8.45)

The manual focus system enlarges the center of the image, and is controlled using the left and right buttons. It’s very touchy, and hard to use properly.

The white balance presets are daylight, overcast, shade, day-white fluorescent, daylight fluorescent and tungsten. It also ahs the unusual ability to apply these to an image in playback, which is a very rare tool. It can also manually white balance, or be left on auto.

Drive/Burst Mode (11.50)

The incredible speeds that the EX-FC100 can reach are the primary selling point for the camera, and what separates it from other models on the market. You access the high speed modes by pressing a button on the top of the camera, which lowers the resolution to six megapixels, but ramps up the speed considerably. We would have liked to have some sort of burst mode available at full resolution, even if it was slower.

The burst rate can be set to 3, 5, 10, 15 or 30 frames per second. The maximum number of images saved can be set to 5, 10, 20 or 30 frames. There’s also the ability to pre-buffer images constantly, for up to 25 shots in advance. If this is done, then when the shutter is pressed the buffered images are saved, and the remaining number of photos are taken. This is great for making sure you don’t lose the perfect shot in the time it takes you to press the shutter down.

Another button on top of the camera is labeled Slow, and this starts up slow motion mode. When this is activated, the camera records three seconds of still footage, which is then played back in slow motion, so you can choose to save individual frames as still photos.

Shot to Shot (15.53)

At the maximum speed of 30 frames per second, the Casio EX-FC100 blows every other camera in our test group out of the water.