Casio EXILIM ZOOM EX-Z80 - Digital camera - compact - 8.1 Mpix - optical zoom: 3 x - supported memory: MMC, SD, SDHC, MMCplus - vivid pink

I owned several cameras, film and digital, and this is by far the best digital point-and-shoot I ever had. I have to admit that it took me a long time to decide on buying a Casio as opposed to Cannon, Nikon, or Pentax, as I had very good experience with those.
However my wife was supposed to be the main user of this new camera, so when she saw it in a store, she was sold on it, as the camera is very small and very good looking. She loved the green one (which is is actually a greenish yellow) so we paid $10 more than the black one and got it.
To me it took a lot more to be convinced, so here is my point of view on it:
Pros:
- Very good quality of the pictures (the auto focus works great and the multi point metering system takes care nicely of most situations, including some more difficult shots (like high contrast, back lit subjects, moving subjects, etc)
- I love that you can easily switch between standard format (1.33 ratio), film format (3:2 ratio), or wide screen (16:9 format).
- Metal body, makes the camera fill solid and you can have a good grip and stability.
- Easy to switch between different menus like changing formats, flash modes, ISO sensitivity, different self timer settings, shooting modes (like single, continuous, etc), auto shutter, and face recognition modes.
- Although I consider face recognition a gimmick and I never use it in real life, I did try it and surprisingly works very well! Not only the camera will find and focus on the face, but you can set also the Auto-Shutter to take the picture only when the subject smiles. There is even more: you can record several faces in the camera's internal memory, and when those people are in a larger group, the camera will find their faces and focus on them, so they come out the best! I tried the freakish feature and it works!!!
Also, it has other many Auto-Shooting features, that some people might want, I tried them, they work but, I don't normally need most of them.
- The movie recording quality is very good. I set it to wide screen and the highest quality and it is exceptionally good, I say at least like a DVD (also it does record sound very well, with no significant camera's own noise).
- It has its own movie recording button, so you do not need to go though any settings in order to start filming. You push the trigger on top, you take pictures, or if you push the trigger on the back side, you are filming (push again to stop). It can not get any simpler or faster.
- If you don't like to mingle with settings, you may find the "Best Shot" setting very simple and useful. You click the "BS" button (funny name... ;-), and you get a bunch of sample photos. Use the left-right-up-down buttons to navigate to the picture that is similar to what you are shooting, push OK, and the camera sets itself up for that type of picture (like flowers, portrait, self portrait, sports, night scenes etc, etc).
- I love the burst shooting mode (aka CS - Continuous Shooting), which has several settings:
CS - shoots pictures at the quality you set as fast as possible;
CS-FAST shoots lower resolution pictures and saves them to the internal memory. I got about 4 to 5 pictures per second in this mode, and the quality is good enough to print 5x7" pictures. This is a life saver when your kid shakes hands with the principal of the school, when they make a karate jump, or when they throw that ball. Normally you push the trigger and hope the camera takes the picture at the right time. With this, you push the trigger a little earlier, hold it until the kid is through, and before you know it you have a series of pictures taken at short intervals of each other, so your chances are a lot better to find one that shows what you want to see.
- Used with a 4GB SDHC memory card, my wife took literary hundreds of pictures and filmed many minutes of movie during a recent trip before she had to transfer them to the computer. She did that only several times during the 3 weeks trip.
- Also, one charge of the battery lasted for several days. In fact she did not charge it until, into the four or fifth day of the trip, the low battery message came on.
Negatives:
None so important to give anything lower than a five star rating.
- I would have liked a "shorter" focal length on the close end, so that you can have a wider view as sometimes there is not enough room to get away from larger groups of people. However most of the cameras have this focal lengths, so this is just a wish with small point and shoot cameras.
All being said, I love this little camera.

Bought one for my son so he'd stop borrowing my "professional" camera. Then I bought one for me because he was taking better pictures and video than I was!

Has all the features I was looking for, but I particularly like the instant video record button so I don't have to fumble around trying to switch modes when I want to shoot video. A 4gb SD card aparently holds 2.2 hours of video, so on my next family vacation I won't even need to take along a camcorder.

FYI: This EXACT camera was HALF the price 3 years ago when I bought mine. Being that it's bright pink, chances are that the people buying this product will be young and clumsy girls like myself. The color is beautiful. It is the perfect size. Good pictures. But it is NOT durable. Make sure to take care of it. I dropped mine ONCE from waist level to the ground and it never worked again. Such a sad day...

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