Casio Exilim EX-FC100 Digital Camera Review

Casio Exilim EX-FC100

Digital Camera Review

3.8 Casio has managed to squeeze the extremely high-speed photography and slow-motion video into the EX-FC100, which takes 9-megapixel images (or 6 megapixels at 30 frames per second) and records video at up to 1000 frames per second.  While it had some issues with image quality, the high speeds are a powerful draw.
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Video  
x Resolution Page 6 of 16 Sample Photos x

Movie Mode (12.50)


The Casio Exilim EX-FC100 doesn't have a distinct movie mode, seperate from still photography. Rather, it just has a big red button on the back, that you press to start recording video, while you use the shutter button for still shots. You can toggle between normal speed, and slow-motion/high-speed. In normal mode, the resolution can be set to HD (1280x720) or standard definition (640x480). The slow motion modes have varying sizes, depending on how fast the shutter speed is. For examples of how these look, refer to our Sample Images page. The problem with some of these modes is that the resulting video is so small as to be almost useless. The 1000 fps video, for instance, requires a huge amount of light to correctly expose, and the final movie is tiny and very poor quality. However, the 210 fps video is a much more reasonable size.

Slow-motion Video Size Options
30-210 fps 480x360
420 fps 224x168
1000 fps 224x64

 

Movie Mode Controls
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The high speed video modes

Since there's no dedicated Movie or Video menu, it's hard to tell which available options affect the movie mode, or if they just change still photography. For instance, you can alter the metering and ISO, but it isn't clear if these tweak the movies or just the still images, because everything is contained within a single mode. We weren't able to see any difference between video performance at ISOs 100 and 1600, but it's hard to say.

While shooting video, you can press the shutter button to record a still photo, up to 10 times in each recording.

Video Color (9.41)


The Casio EX-FC100 was surprisingly accurate for video color, given the trouble it gave us in terms of photographic color accuracy. The chart below shows the color error, so a short line is better. The Casio performed better than any of the comparison cameras except the Canon SD970. Click here for more on how we test video color.

Video Color Comparison
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Video Sharpness (1.50)


The sharpness test for video looks at how well the camera can resolve detail, while in motion, both horizontally and vertically. Even though the Casio records in HD, the sharpness is quite low, barely beating the standard definition Fujifilm F200EXR. The chart below shows video resolution measurements, so a taller bar is better. Click here for more on how we test video sharpness

Video Resolution Comparison
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Movie Scene Modes


The FC100 has two special scene modes for video. The first is pre-record, and this continually buffers five seconds of video (or two seconds of high-speed video), which are then saved when the record button is pressed, after which normal recording continues. YouTube video mode saves the movie in a special folder on the SD card, which can easily be uploaded from using Casio's bundled software. It doesn't actually change the recording setting at all.

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