As revealed in the previous post, I own a Casio Exilim Z120. It took me almost a year to purchase it. I guess I’m slow. I still shoot most of the “artistic” shots on film with a Canon EOS 3000.
The purchase of the digicam was due to the need to make more casual shots, fill in the family album and to have a camera along at all times.
The wish to carry it along dictated an ultracompact. The Casio I can carry comfortably in my jeans pocket.
When shooting with friends’ Canon A*-s and Olympuses I always had trouble with the speed of the camera. When shooting a football match a year ago, I missed most opportunities because the Canon took ages to make one photo.
When shooting fast cars with an Olympus, the impressions were very strange. I didn’t get the framing right at most times, but it appeared, that the camera was actually buffering the image to grab a shot of the moment about 0,2 seconds before I pressed the trigger. Apparently my reaction time wasn’t similar to the developers of this camera.
The Casio takes its time while focusing. I think it’s a bit less than a second.The screen image freezes at that time as all the power is directed to the processor. After prefocusing the shooting speed is quite acceptable. I’m usually able to get the shots I see.
Manual settings very useful. The Casio’s datasheet is confusing, claiming that you only have shutter speeds up to 1/8. This is true only in the fully automatic mode, apparently to protect you from getting too fuzzy images 🙂 In the shutter priority and manual mode, you get exposure times up to 60 seconds. Aperture priority allows you to select from the grand set of TWO aperture values, although the automated mode uses more. I wonder if this is limited by the quality of the lens…
Image quality isn’t too good. I’m usually applying lots of sharpening to get good results. Shadows are mostly too light as well. I think some of this is due to the compact form factor. But as I said, there’s film for the photos you’d like to hang on the wall.
