Casio Exilim EX-V8

Color (5.56)
Say you took a picture of a fruit stand, laden with bananas, apples, oranges, grapes, lemons, and other fruits. If you took the same picture with a bunch of different cameras, each camera would reproduce the colors of the fruit differently. Some cameras may oversaturate or undersaturate the colors, making the fruit look super vibrant or disappointingly dull. Some cameras may shift the colors themselves, making ripe yellow bananas look sickly green, or green grapes appear bluish. The same goes for people’s faces and the colors in landscapes, especially blue skies.

We test color accuracy by photographing an industry standard GretagMacbeth Colorchecker test chart under bright, even studio lighting, and compare the colors the camera reproduces with the known colors of the chart. The ColorChecker consists of 24 different color tiles that represent common colors from around the color spectrum. The image below shows how the camera performs. The outer squares show the color the camera reproduces, the inner squares show the ideal color of the ColorChecker corrected for luminance, and the inner rectangle shows the ideal color of the chart under an even exposure.

As the image shows, a number of the color tiles are quite different from their ideal colors. All the blues are shifted very purple, which means your blue skies will look purple, as well. The bright greens, yellows, and reds are also significantly shifted. The graph below shows the color accuracy in a more quantitative way. The locations of the ideal chart colors are located on the color spectrum as squares, and the colors the V8 reproduced are shown as circles. The lines between the circles and squares show the magnitude of the color error for each color tile

Imatest measured an average color error of 10.8, which is less than stellar. You can see how many of the colors drift significantly from their ideal values. Your picture of the fruit stand will not look completely accurate, nor will your blue skies, green foliage, or skin tones. On the good side, the saturation level of 102.2 percent is quite good, and means the V8’s colors will not look excessively dull or vibrant.

Resolution (5.45)
We test resolution by photographing an industry standard resolution test chart under even studio lighting. We vary the focal length, aperture, and exposure compensation, and then run the images through Imatest to find the settings that produce the sharpest image. Imatest measures resolution in units of line widths per picture height (lw/ph), which represent the number of equally spaced alternating black and white lines that can fit across the entire image frame before becoming blurred.

Click on the image above to view the full-resolution file

The 8-megapixel Casio V8 proved to be sharpest at ISO 50, f/5.7, with a focal length of 17mm. The camera recorded 1492 lw/ph horizontally with 0.6 percent oversharpening, and 1244 lw/ph vertically with 14.4 percent undersharpening. The excessive vertical undersharpening, which happens at almost every setting, is a problem and means horizontal high contrast lines will look quite blurry. Don’t expect to print really large photos or blow up small crops with the V8. These resolution scores are below average for 2007 cameras, and are lower than similar point-and-shoots, such as the Panasonic Lumix TZ3 and Sony CyberShot T100.

Noise – Manual ISO (6.08)
If you’ve ever taken a photo with a digital camera in low light, you probably noticed graininess or scattered dots on your picture, almost like TV static. This graininess is called noise, and in digital camera photos it can appear in the form of scattered dots, splotches, or even colored splotches. It almost never looks as nice as film grain, and is to be avoided whenever possible. Higher ISO settings intrinsically yield higher noise levels.

We test a camera’s noise levels by photographing our test chart under bright, even studio lighting at all the camera’s ISO settings. The Casio V8 keeps noise levels quite low up to ISO 200, but at ISO 400 and 800 images are very noisy. The V8’s noise comes in the form of colored splotches, mostly yellow and bluish, and looks quite ugly. This is a camera you’ll want to keep at low ISO whenever possible.

Noise – Auto ISO (1.4)
We also test noise levels with the ISO set to Auto. The V8 chose ISO 400 under our bright studio lights, which is unfortunate because at ISO 400 the noise is quite visible. You may need to set the ISO manually with this camera in order to reduce noise in photos.

White Balance (7.43)
Since all light sources have slightly different color tints, it is important your camera can recognize this and adjust colors accordingly. This is called white balancing, and problems with it can lead to odd color casts in your photos. We test white balance by photographing our ColorChecker color test chart under four different light sources: flash, fluorescent, outdoor shade, and tungsten. We test the Auto white balance setting as well as the appropriate presets located in the White Balance menu.

Auto WB (9.69)
The V8’s accuracy is very inconsistent when using Auto white balance. Under flash and fluorescent light, the white balance is very accurate, yet under outdoor shade and tungsten light it is tremendously inaccurate. Though the corresponding presets aren’t terrific either, the Auto white balance under shade and tungsten is so bad that you should really avoid using the Auto setting under these light sources whenever possible.

Auto WB - Flash Illumination

Auto WB - Fluorescent Illumination

Auto WB - Shade Illumination

Auto WB - Tungsten Illumination

Preset WB (5.18)
The Outdoor Shade and Tungsten presets are more accurate than the Auto setting, though not by much. You still may see a slight color cast on your photos taken under these light sources. The Fluorescent N and Fluorescent D settings are actually less accurate under fluorescent light than the Auto setting.

Fluorescent N WB - Fluorescent Illumination

Fluorescent D WB - Fluorescent Illumination

Shade WB - Shade Illumination

Tungsten WB - Tungsten Illumination

Still Life Sequences
Click to view the high-resolution image.

Still Life Scene
ISO 50	ISO 50
ISO 100	ISO 100
ISO 200	ISO 200
ISO 400	ISO 400
ISO 800	ISO 800

Low Light (5.37)
In addition to the Color and Noise tests described above, we looked at the V8’s performance in low light. We photographed the ColorChecker at light levels of 60, 30, 15, and 5 lux, which correspond roughly to the light level of a room lit softly with two lamps (60 lux), and darker. We always shoot this test at the highest ISO sensitivity offered by the camera, which in the case of the V8 is ISO 800.

Low Light Tests
60 Lux	30 Lux
15 Lux	5 Lux

In low light, color accuracy suffers significantly and noise levels are high. At 5 lux, 3 percent of the image is lost to noise. The good news, however, is that the V8 has no problem exposing in low light. In other words, you can take pictures in very low light with the V8, they just won’t look great.

We also test long exposure performance, but only at ISO 400 so we can standardize the test from camera to camera. The V8 has a Shutter Priority mode in which the camera can take shutter speeds as long as 60 seconds, but at these long exposures the ISO cannot be set. The camera will not take exposures longer than 1 second at ISO 400, so we couldn’t test its long exposure performance. That said, the long shutter speed option is a nice addition to the V8, and could be some fun to play with, even if the photos don’t turn out amazingly well.

Dynamic Range (5.09)
Dynamic range refers to the tonal sensitivity of a camera. In other words, the better a camera’s dynamic range, the more information it can discern in both bright and dark areas of a photo. This is especially useful for photos with contrasting bright and dark sections, such as a bride and groom (white dress and black tux), or a landscape in bright sunlight (bright highlights and dark shadows). We test dynamic range by photographing a backlit Stouffer test chart. The Stouffer chart is made up of a long row of rectangles that vary slightly in tone from brightest white to darkest black. The more rectangles the camera can distinguish, the better the dynamic range.

The V8 has very good dynamic range at ISO 50 and 100, probably due to its low noise at these ISOs, but significantly worse dynamic range at higher ISO sensitivities. Just as we mentioned in the Noise section, keep this camera to as low an ISO setting as possible, especially in situations with high contrast. Overall, the V8’s dynamic range score is slightly worse than the 2007 average, and significantly worse than another long-zoom point-and-shoot, the Panasonic Lumix TZ3, or the similarly-shaped Sony Cyber-shot T100.

Speed/Timing – All speed tests are conducted using a Kingston Ultimate 120X 2GB SD Card, with the camera set to highest resolution and best quality.

Startup to First Shot (8.8)
The V8 takes only 1.2 seconds to start up and fire a shot.

Shot-to-Shot (8.5)
The V8 has three different continuous shooting modes: Normal, High, and Flash. In Normal mode, the camera takes full resolution photos every 1.5 seconds continuously until the card is filled. In High mode the camera can only shoot at very low resolution (2-megapixels), and takes shots every 0.3 seconds. Flash mode allows shooters to take a quick burst of flash-illuminated shots. The camera fires three shots, each 0.3 seconds apart.

Shutter-to-Shot (9.0)
The V8 has no measurable lag when either prefocused or not prefocused. This is excellent.

Processing (7.6)
The camera processes a 4.5 MB full-resolution, top-quality photo in 1.2 seconds when taken at ISO 100.

Video Performance (5.42)
Bright Indoor Light – 3000 lux
We test the Movie mode performance of cameras similarly to the way we test their still photos. To evaluate video color accuracy we record footage of the ColorChecker under bright studio lights at 3000 lux. As you can see in the graph below, the color error is tremendous, but this is almost always the case for cameras shooting in tungsten light and set to Auto white balance. The V8 has very low noise in bright light, however.

Low Light – 30 lux
We also dim the lights in the lab to record video footage in less than ideal shooting conditions. At 30 lux, the V8 still has significant problems with color accuracy, but again keeps noise extremely low (only 1 percent of the image). Jumpy noise in videos can be very distracting, and the V8 really minimizes this.

Video Resolution
We shoot footage of our resolution chart to see how sharp the camera’s video is. The Casio V8 resolves 316 lw/ph horizontally with 6.8 percent undersharpening, and 456 lw/ph vertically with 22.3 percent oversharpening. This is much more oversharpening than necessary, and introduces the artifacts (note the colored lines) you can see in the crops below.

Outdoor Motion
Finally, we take cameras outside to capture footage of moving cars and pedestrians. The V8’s motion is a bit stuttery, especially when subjects move off the frame. The focus isn’t always dead-on, making the video appear a little soft sometimes, and there is some motion moiré. However, the color looks very good, as does the exposure. Overall, the V8’s Movie mode looks better than average for a digital camera. 

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