Casio Casio EX-FS10

Manual Control Options
The Casio S10 has a small handful of manual controls. Many appear in the panel function menu that can be turned on and off in the Setup menu. If you are one who never cares to change the ISO, then turn the panel off and enjoy the unfettered view.

Focus
Autofocus – The Casio S10 has a through-the-lens contrast detection autofocus system. It has nine points, but all the points are crammed together in the central quarter of the frame. There are three autofocus areas: Spot, Multi, and Tracking. When the default multi option is chosen, all nine autofocus points show up as gray boxes in the frame. When the focus is detected, a few of the boxes that are focused turn green. The gray boxes always remain, though, obstructing the view.

The autofocus system seems slow on this camera. Granted, it’s a preproduction model: the speed could change by the time it hits store shelves. But the model on the show floor took about three-quarters of a second to focus and take a picture.

For low light, there is an autofocus assist lamp that can be turned on and off in the Setup menu. The Focus mode can be changed from Autofocus to Macro, Pan focus, Infinity, and Manual focus. In the standard Autofocus mode, you can focus as close as 40 centimeters. That shortens to 15 centimeters in the Macro mode. That is shorter, but isn’t as close up as most digital cameras that can focus as close as 5 centimeters.

The Casio Exilim EX-S10 has an extensive face detection system, but it didn’t work as well as I’d hoped. The menu had me excited. The menu included Family First, Normal, Off, Face Detection Setting (Speed, Quality), Record Family, and Edit Family options. The face detection system can potentially recognize up to six faces, which isn’t much compared to competitors. Canon’s PowerShot digital cameras can recognize up to 35 faces at a time.

Back to the menu. The Family First option allows you to set the camera so it recognizes your family members and prioritizes their faces before other people’s faces. The normal face detection doesn’t prioritize. You can set the system to be speedy or accurate in the face detection setting (why can’t I have both?!). For the Family First option to work, you have to record pictures of your family members (up to six); you can then edit faces in the last option.

When I played with the S10 I got it to recognize two reps at the Casio booth. The camera didn’t recognize profiles; subjects had to be looking directly at the camera. This technology seems old, as newer systems this year from Fujifilm and Canon allow faces to be recognized even at different angles. Another caveat: the faces have to be large in the frame.

Overall, the Casio S10’s autofocus system is slow, and its extensive face detection system is disappointing compared to the options in its menu.

Manual Focus – This is the only feature that doesn’t seem to be working on the preproduction Casio S10. This is likely due to its preproduction status, because it turns on the tracking autofocus system rather than the manual focus. It can manually focus from 15 centimeters to infinity.

ISO
The ISO sensitivity can be automated, but there are also several manual ISO controls in the Recording menu: 50, 100, 200, 400, 800, and 1600. These are all available at full resolution. There is a High ISO Sensitivity Scene mode listed among the Best Shot modes so you can take pictures in low light without using the weak flash. It uses the ISO 1600 setting and doesn’t shrink the image size like some high sensitivity modes do.

White Balance
The Exilim S10 doesn’t have anything fancy with its white balance options. No white balance adjustment or compensation or anything. In fact, the S10 doesn’t even put the white balance in the convenient Panel menu; it hides it in the standard Recording menu. Options include Auto, Daylight, Overcast, Shade, Day White FL, Daylight FL, Tungsten, and Manual. The presets are available in the Playback mode to change the color tint post capture. The Manual white balance provides more accurate colors in any lighting, though. It can be set by following the on-screen prompts, framing something white, and pushing the shutter.

Exposure
Program auto exposure is available on the Casio S10, so if you like to have control over shutter speed and aperture then this isn’t the camera for you. Exposure compensation is available in the Panel and Recording menus on the typical +/- 2 scale. A live exposure histogram can be viewed while shooting and one can be seen in the Playback mode when the display is set to do so.

Metering
The metering options are buried in the Recording menu. They consist of the typical offerings: Multi-Pattern, Center-Weighted, and Spot. Multi-Pattern is the default and worked just fine in the dim convention center.

Shutter Speed
The Casio Exilim EX-S10 has an electronic and mechanical shutter that flips in a range of 1/2-1/2000 of a second in most exposure modes and slows down to 4 seconds in the Night Scene mode. This is a typical range for a compact digital camera that automates its shutter speed.

There is an interesting “auto shutter” feature that “automatically detects the right moment and takes the photo,” according to the company’s press release. You can set the camera to detect blur and take the picture when there is less blur, detect panning and take the picture when there is no horizontal blur, and detect smiling to theoretically get just the right shot.

This is a bad feature waiting to happen. Or did it happen already? The idea is that you’ll never miss a shot again, but relying on a camera the size of your credit card to automatically get the shot isn’t a great idea, either. Indeed, this feature didn’t work well. I set it to detect a smile. I waited and waited and nothing happened. Then I figured out you have to push the shutter release button once for it to even start detecting. Once I did that, it recognized the booth rep with the face detection system. It also recognized her shoulder as a separate face. Hmm. She smiled and nothing happened. She leaned over to help someone and it took the picture. Rats. Missed the smile and got a horrible picture of a leaning booth rep.

Aperture
The Exilim 3x optical zoom lens has a max aperture of f/2.8 when zoomed out and f/5.3 when zoomed in. The two-step aperture can shrink as small as f/7.9. The aperture cannot be manually adjusted; the camera automates this.

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