Casio Exilim EX-FC100

Video 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 (1280×720) or standard definition (640×480). 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.

210 fps Video Sample

420 fps Video Sample

1000 fps Video Sample

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.

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.

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. More on how we test video color.

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. More on how we test video sharpness.