Casio Exilim EX-Z850

Auto Mode
While many camera manufacturers designate their auto mode with a green symbol, Casio goes against the grain a bit, marking it on the mode dial with a red box. In the auto mode, the camera takes over controlling a variety of features, including shutter speed, aperture and ISO. Users who want more choices can select the BS symbol, or Best Shot mode, on the dial which lets you pick from 34 preset modes. Those who want even more control should try the "A," "S" and "M" settings which handle manual and aperture and shutter speed priority options.

Movie Mode
The Z850 can shoot MPEG-4 movies in three formats. In its HQ (high quality) format, movies are captured at 640 x 480 pixels at approximately 4 MB per second at 30 frames per second. With the camera’s measly 8 MB of internal memory you can capture about 16 seconds of video in this format. With a 256MB SD card, you can capture approximately 8 minutes and 21 seconds of video.

In the Normal mode, video is also captured at 640 x 480 but at 2.1 MB per second, 30 fps. The 8 MP of internal memory can capture approximately 31 seconds of video. With a 256MB SD card, it’s approximately 15 minutes and 52 seconds. In the LP (long play mode), video is captured at 320 x 240, 745 KB per second, 15 fps. With the internal memory, you can capture about 1 minute, 27 seconds in this format. With a 256MB card, about 44 minutes and 17 seconds.

When shooting long movies, the camera automatically reduces camera shake electronically. In dimly lit settings, the Z850’s built-in Illumination LED light will marginally help light up a scene. Unlike some competitors who keep the movie mode pretty basic, Casio includes 9 Best Shot movie settings on the EX-Z850—Portrait, Scenery, Night Scene, Fireworks, Backlight, High Sensitivity, Silent, Short Movie, Past Movie. The EX-Z850 also offers a Motion Print function, for extracting stills from clips.

Drive / Burst Mode
The Z850 does have several continuous shutter modes including normal speed, high speed, flash continuous, zoom and multi. Unfortunately full specs for all these modes were not available at press time, though we can give a few details. Multi Continuous Shutter provides 25 low-res images on a single frame, like an index print; other cameras have modes comparable to this. However, we already mentioned Flash Continuous Shutter, which can supposedly take 3 pictures—with flash—in a single second. This is truly unique. Also unique is the Zoom Continuous Shutter, which can supposedly record two images with one press of the shutter button, the second of which is an enlarged area of the first.

Unfortunately, we did not have an opportunity to test these claims at PMA. We will look at the Z850’s continuous drive modes more thoroughly in an upcoming full review.

Playback Mode
Playback mode is engaged by pressing the green playback button on the top back of the camera. It’s one of the few areas on the EX-Z850 that’s not especially exciting. It offers typical options like a favorites folder, a calendar view and the ability to copy images from the internal memory to the card, and editing options like resize, rotate and trim for editing; the date edit function is maybe the most unusual, but that’s not saying much. I couldn’t even find a slide show option in-camera or on the spec sheet, though hopefully this is only because my time with the Z850 was limited and not because Casio didn’t include one.

Custom Image Presets
Casio heaps on Best Shot modes galore on the Z850 – 34 in all, and that’s not including the 9 Best Shot Video modes. One mode to note on this model, as well as on the Z60 and Z600, is the new eBay Best Shot Mode which is the 21st of the 34 Best Shot modes. This mode was added to these models as part of a licensing agreement with eBay, which remains one of the world’s most popular websites and is one of the Internet’s most marketable brands. While having the eBay name and logo in the Best Shot modes might be a good hook for Casio, the mode itself does not seem to do too much other than downsample an 8MB image to 2MB. Granted, most consumers probably wouldn’t want to do this basic task in Photoshop, but to call it an "eBay" mode rather than a basic Internet mode is a bit misleading. To be fair, the eBay Best Shot mode does includes an Auto Macro feature that’s not bad for shooting close-up images of items you want to post on eBay. But why not have a feature in the mode to make colors pop, or to optimize lighting or anything else to make that dreary picture of your red galoshes a little more presentable?

The Best Shot function also adds an "Old Photo" Best Shot Mode, which, according to Casio, "refreshes faded colors of old photos by bringing them back to life in digital format." We’re not exactly sure how this works, but at an initial glance, it seems like it boosts illumination and adds some contrast to faded 2-dimensional photos.

Aside from eBay and Old Photo, the custom image presets are: Portrait, Splashing Water, Pastel, Scenery, Sundown, Illustration, Portrait With Scenery, Night Scene, Cross, Children, Night Scene Portrait, Monochrome, Sports, Fireworks, Retro, Candlelight Portrait, Food, Twilight, Party, Text, ID Photo, Pet, Collection, Flower, Businesscard and documents, Natural Green, Backlight, Autumn Leaves, Anti-Shake and White board, etc.