Casio EX-FH100 Review

4.0

May 12, 2010 | Mark Goldstein |

Buy a Exilim EX-FH100 Black Digital Camera (10.1MP, 10x Opt, SDHC Card Slot)

Lowest Price: N/A

Buy a Exilim EX-FH100 Black Digital Camera (10.1MP, 10x Opt, SDHC Card Slot)

Lowest Price: N/A

Image Quality

All of the sample images in this Review were taken using the 10 megapixel Fine JPEG setting, which gives an average image size of around 4.5Mb.

The Casio EX-FH100 produces images of good quality. The biggest issue is noise and loss of detail at relatively slow ISO speeds. The 1/2.3 inch, 10 megapixel sensor recorded noise-free images at ISO 100, but there's already some noise and slight softening of detail at ISO 200. ISO 400 shows a little more noise, loss of fine detail and significant colour desaturation, and ISO 800, 1600 and 3200 are even worse, with obvious loss of fine detail and even more noise. The Casio EX-FH100 handled chromatic aberrations well, with limited purple fringing effects appearing only in high contrast situations and generally at the edges of the frame. The built-in flash worked well indoors with good overall exposure and no red-eye. The night photograph was excellent, with the maximum shutter speed of 30 seconds being long enough for most after-dark shots. The anti-shake system works very well when hand-holding the camera in low-light conditions or when using the telephoto end of the zoom range. Macro performance is poor, only allowing you to focus as close as 7cms away from the subject. The images were a little soft straight out of the Casio EX-FH100 at the default sharpening setting and ideally require some further sharpening in an application like Adobe Photoshop, or you can change the in-camera setting.

Noise

There are 6 ISO settings available on the Casio EX-FH100. Here are some 100% crops which show the noise levels for each ISO setting.

ISO 100 (100% Crop)	ISO 200 (100% Crop)


ISO 400 (100% Crop)	ISO 800 (100% Crop)


ISO 1600 (100% Crop)	ISO 3200 (100% Crop)

Focal Range

The Casio EX-FH100's 10x zoom lens provides a focal length of 24-240mm in 35mm terms, as demonstrated below.

24mm	240mm

Sharpening

Here are two 100% crops which have been Saved as Web - Quality 50 in Photoshop. The right-hand image has had some sharpening applied in Photoshop. The out-of-the camera images are a little soft at the default sharpening setting and benefit from some further sharpening in a program like Adobe Photoshop. You can also change the in-camera sharpening level to suit your tastes.

Original (100% Crop)	Sharpened (100% Crop)

File Quality

The Casio EX-FH100 has 3 different image quality settings available, with Fine being the highest quality option. Here are some 100% crops which show the quality of the various options, with the file size shown in brackets.

10M Fine (4.3Mb) (100% Crop)	10M Normal (2.2Mb) (100% Crop)


10M Economy (1.5Mb) (100% Crop)

Chromatic Aberrations

The Casio EX-FH100 handled chromatic aberrations well during the review, with some limited purple fringing present around the edges of objects in certain high-contrast situations, as shown in the example below.

Example 1 (100% Crop)	Example 2 (100% Crop)

Macro

The Casio EX-FH100 offers a Macro setting that allows you to focus on a subject that is 7cms away from the camera when the lens is set to wide-angle. The first image shows how close you can get to the subject (in this case a compact flash card). The second image is a 100% crop.

Macro Shot	100% Crop

Flash

The flash settings on the Casio EX-FH100 are Auto, Flash Off, Flash On, and Red Eye Reduction. These shots of a white coloured wall were taken at a distance of 1.5m.

Flash Off - Wide Angle (24mm)	Flash On - Wide Angle (24mm)


Flash Off - Telephoto (240mm)	Flash On - Telephoto (240mm)

And here are some portrait shots. As you can see, neither the Flash On or the Red-eye reduction settings caused any amount of red-eye.

Flash On	Flash On (100% Crop)


Red Eye Reduction	Red Eye Reduction (100% Crop)

Night

The Casio EX-FH100's maximum shutter speed is 30 seconds, which is excellent news if you're seriously interested in night photography. The shot below was taken using a shutter speed of 2 seconds at ISO 100.

Night Shot	Night Shot (100% Crop)

Anti Shake

The Casio EX-FH100 has an anti-shake mechanism, which allows you to take sharp photos at slower shutter speeds than other digital cameras. To test this, I took 2 handheld shots of the same subject with the same settings. The first shot was taken with anti shake turned off, the second with it turned on. Here are some 100% crops of the images to show the results. As you can see, with anti shake turned on, the images are much sharper than with anti shake turned off. This feature really does seem to make a difference and could mean capturing a successful, sharp shot or missing the opportunity altogether.

Shutter Speed / Focal Length	Anti Shake Off (100% Crop)	Anti Shake On (100% Crop)
1/20th / 24mm
1/8th / 240mm

High-Speed Modes

The Casio EX-FH100 has some different High Speed scene modes which combine several burst images into a single, clear photo. They do create sharper, clearer hand-held pictures, but at the expense of a noticeable loss of fine detail.