Casio Exilim EX-Z700 First Impressions Review

Auto Mode
This digital camera powers up in the auto mode, also known as the Snapshot mode. The Z700 assumes automatic settings, but users have the option of changing settings and having the camera “remember” them in the setup menu for the next time the camera is turned on. Ironically, the auto mode is also the most manual mode on the camera. In some of the preset modes, the white balance or ISO is unavailable. In the auto mode, though, there is full access to everything on the camera. The auto mode performed well in optimal lighting conditions, but tended to blur subjects in low light by slowing shutter speeds. 

Movie Mode
The Casio Exilim Z700 has a movie mode that is listed with the other modes in the Best Shot menu. The Quality menu lists the mode's resolution settings: 640 x 480 pixels at 30 fps, 512 x 384 at 30 fps, and 320 x 240 at 15 fps. Casio recommends using SD cards that have a read/write transfer speed of at least 10 MB per second. Otherwise, a few frames can be “dropped” when using the top two resolution settings, according to the user manual. This could potentially happen if recording to the internal memory (which wouldn't make much sense anyway because you can only really fit a few seconds of video on it), but didn't happen in my testing. The top resolution is television-quality, but the next step down doesn't look quite so good. It's not horrible, but there is definitely a difference. The lowest quality setting is great for email but still has an incredibly choppy frame rate that will spawn any viewer's motion sickness.

The Z700's movie mode doesn't have optical zoom, but does offer digital zoom. Warning: it makes the movie look awful, no matter what video size you're using. Another downside: the audio. The monaural audio doesn't pick up much at all unless the subject is within about 6 ft of the camera. Even still, the audio comes out muffled in playback. Playback on the camera is possible with options to play, stop, fast forward, rewind, and scroll through frame by frame. Users can select frames for printing and can edit the movie so that only the beginning, end, or beginning and end are saved. Overall, the movie mode wasn't very impressive but the editing features were a nice touch.