Casio Exilim EX-V7

Manual Control Options
The Casio Exilim Hi-Zoom EX-V7 has Manual, Aperture Priority, and Shutter Speed Priority modes directly on the mode dial. The red rectangle icon on the mode dial is called Snapshot mode but could be accurately called a Program mode too. With an Easy mode and 33 Best Shot modes rounding out the selection, there is an exposure mode for everyone on this digital camera. The manual controls aren’t the easiest to access, but that’s the nature of having manual controls on a compact camera that is too small for the comfy dials and buttons of an SLR. The Casio V7 has plenty of other manual controls like white balance, flash intensity, ISO, etc. that will be discussed in the next few sections of this first impressions review.

Focus
Auto Focus
The EX-V7 has a contrast detection auto focus system that is helped out by an auto focus assist lamp. The lamp is strangely placed below the lens on the front of the camera, but its placement doesn’t seem to affect the camera’s performance. AF, Macro, and Infinity focus modes are found in the recording menu, along with Spot, Multi, and Tracking AF Area modes. Normally, the camera can focus from 11.81 inches to infinity. That range shortens to 3.94-15.75 inches in the macro mode. The auto focus system isn’t very impressive. It didn’t add much to the shutter lag, but just plain didn’t do its job much of the time. Pictures didn’t come out exceptionally sharp, and were often blurry. The same story is told in the movie mode too: the auto focus system seemed to have some trouble. We can give the Casio V7 the benefit of the doubt here: I was shooting in the poorly lit convention center, so perhaps it does much better outside where there’s plenty of light. To its credit, the Casio V7’s Tracking auto focus mode is quite impressive and helps considerably. This mode displays a green box over the subject it is tracking, and it tracks them well.

Manual Focus 
The manual focus is available in the same Focus Mode menu as the AF, Macro, and Infinity modes. Users can manually focus as close as 3.94 inches. When activated, a yellow box appears in the center of the live view. The screen magnifies this center and users can adjust the focus by pushing on the right and left sides of the multi-selector. On many digital cameras, the resolution on the LCD screen is so bad that it’s hard to see whether the subject is focused or not. This isn’t the case on the V7, which provides a nice clear view.

ISO
Previous Casio digital cameras offered paltry ISO ranges from 50-400, so it’s nice to see the V7 extend it a little further. The manual ISO options are available in the Quality menu: Auto, 64, 100, 200, 400, and 800. They are all available at full resolution. An ISO 1600 setting is automatically activated in the High Sensitivity Best Shot mode too. The Anti-Shake mode also uses high ISO sensitivity and fast shutter speeds to reduce blur. Once we get the production model into our lab for testing, we’ll look at how much noise these higher ISO settings produce. Casio has an option that claims to eliminate noise in flat color regions like a blue sky, for instance. We’ll be evaluating that upon full review.

White Balance
In the recording menu, users can change the following white balance settings: Auto, Daylight, Cloudy, Shade, Fluorescent N, Fluorescent D, Incandescent, and Manual. A small live view is available to see the difference between all those settings. The Manual white balance is easy to customize. Users must fill the frame with something white and push the shutter release button; on-screen prompts help beginners do this. Surprisingly, the white balance is available not only while recording but in the playback mode as well. This is helpful for users who didn’t get it right the first time, and need a second chance.

Exposure
There are dozens and dozens of exposure modes ranging from the fully manual to the almost insulting automated modes. There is something for everyone, and they are all quite easy to use. The manual modes have access to the shutter speeds and apertures with the Set button and the multi-selector. There is also exposure compensation available with its +/- 2 range (in 1/3-EV increments) in the Quality menu. If users want to monitor the exposure in real-time, a live histogram can appear complete with red, green, and blue channels when the "Disp." part of the multi-selector is pushed. The histogram is small though, so avoid it if you have bad eyesight.

Metering
The Casio V7 has a standard selection of metering modes: Multi-Pattern, Center-Weighted, and Spot. If that is too intimidating or too tough to find in the Quality menu, users can access the Backlit Best Shot mode for such shooting situations.

Shutter Speed
Shutter speeds can be automatically or manually adjusted, but the range isn’t anything impressive. Most compact digital cameras have a range somewhere in the ballpark of 15-1/2000th of a second. The Casio V7 slows down longer to 60 seconds (in the manual and shutter priority modes), but doesn’t go very fast at 1/800th of a second. The slowest shutter speed shortens when automatically chosen by the camera to 1 second in aperture priority and 1/2 –second in the program mode. To toggle between the aperture and shutter speeds in the manual mode, users need only to push the Set button and then scroll right and left.

Aperture
The internal 7x optical zoom lens on the Casio Hi-Zoom V7 doesn’t allow much light into it. Its maximum aperture is a measly f/3.4 at both wide and telephoto. There are two other options to choose from when in the aperture priority or manual modes: f/4.6 and f/9.2. This is disappointing, especially when the average compact digital camera has a lens with a much wider f/2.8 aperture.