Introduction

Ease of Use

The Casio EX-FC100 is an extremely well-made, very compact digital camera, with a stylish dark grey metal body and excellent overall finish. It's easily small enough to fit into the palm of your hand, despite featuring a fairly versatile 5x optical zoom lens that's equivalent to a focal length of 37-185mm. The maximum aperture is a rather average f/3.6 at the wide end, but a more respectable f/4.5 at the other extreme of the zoom range. The EX-FC100 is quite slim, measuring 2.3cms thick when turned off, making it suited to either a trouser pocket or small camera bag, and it weighs 146g without the battery or memory card fitted.

As with almost every Casio camera that we've reviewed before, the EX-FC100 is one of the best models around in terms of build quality. Even the tripod mount is metal instead of plastic and is positioned centrally. The only minor criticism is the lack of any handgrip on the front, with just a smooth, flat finish embossed with the Exilim brand name, making it more difficult to hold than it really should be. Also, changing cards or batteries is not possible while the FC100 is mounted on a tripod, because the compartment door hinge is too close to the tripod socket. Otherwise this is about as good as it gets for build quality in the world of compact cameras.

The Casio EX-FC100 has relatively few external controls, just 13 in total, which reflects the fact that this is quite a simple camera in functionality terms, with only limited photographic control on offer. All the controls are clearly labeled using industry-standard symbols and terminology, with just a couple of Casio-specific buttons that require a quick read of the manual. Located on top of the EX-FC100 are the On / Off button and the tactile Zoom Lever and Shutter button. On the bottom are the tripod mount and battery compartment, which also houses the SD memory card slot.

On the rear of the EX-FC100 is the 2.7 inch LCD screen, with a number of controls to the right, including a traditional round navigation pad. You can directly access the various flash options by clicking down on the navigation pad, whilst up is used to toggle between the various Display modes (no information, shooting info, shooting info with histogram). The Set button in the middle performs two main tasks - it selects menu options, and also accesses the EX-FC100's Control Panel. This is a vertical list of options displayed on the right of the LCD screen, which provides quick access to some of the camera's more important options, including image size, ISO speed, white balance, and exposure compensation. This system is a good compromise given the size of the camera's LCD screen and therefore the limited space for external controls. It takes a little while to get used to the presence of this on-screen list, but you can toggle it off using the Display mode if it proves too distracting.

Front	Rear

Directly above the navigation pad are the self-explanatory Playback and Camera buttons, which switch between the two modes. Above these buttons is the very welcome inclusion of a dedicated Movie button, which makes it quick and easy to shoot a movie without missing the start of the action. Encircling the Movie button is the Movie Mode switch, which can be set to either High Definition / Standard movies or High Speed Movies. Starting with the former mode, the EX-FC100 can record standard quality movies at 640x480 pixels at 30fps in the AVI format, or High Definition quality movies at 1280x720 pixels at 30fps. You can even pre-record up to 5 seconds of footage using the Prerecord Movie Best Shot mode, and shoot up to 10 still images (6 megapixels) whilst recording a movie simply by pressing the shutter button.

There are some limitations to the EX-FC100's HD movies though. The AVI format choice results in some massive file sizes that quickly fill up your memory cards, and the length of a movie is bizarrely limited to only 10 minutes. The sound quality is not that great, with the usual background noise that accompanies movies shot with cameras that only have mono sound, and even worse, you can't use the optical zoom at all during movie recording (although there is a digital zoom setting available). On a more positive note, you can use the various Best Shot modes to help enhance your movies, and the Anti-Shake system works for both still images and movies.

The High Speed Movie mode allows you to record a movie at up to an incredible 1000fps, effectively slowing down the subject movement. Four different frame rates are available - 210fps, 420fps, 1000fps, and 30-210fps (you can switch speeds whilst recording) - which are recorded at 480x360 pixels, 224x168 pixels, 224x64 pixels and 480x360 pixels respectively. This extreme slow-motion effect is initially very appealing and sure to impress your friends, but as with the HD movie mode, there are some drawbacks to be aware of. You can't use the optical zoom, sound isn't recorded at all, horizontal bands can appear as the lighting fluctuates, and the actual sizes of the recorded movies are pretty small, especially the 224x64 pixel, 1000fps mode.

The Menu and Best Shot buttons are positioned below the navigation pad. The menu system on the Casio EX-FC100 is perfectly straight-forward to use. Quite a lot of the camera's main settings, such as white balance, exposure compensation and ISO speed, are accessed elsewhere, so the main menu system isn't actually that complicated. A row of 3 icons along the top of the LCD screen represent the Record, Quality and Set Up sub-menus, with most of the options being the kind that you set once and then forget about. Due to the very large and bright LCD screen, the various options are easy to access and use, especially as only 6 are shown onscreen at one time. Accessed via the Best Shot button, the Casio EX-FC100 offers Auto and a comprehensive range of 20 different scene modes aimed at the user who just wants to point and shoot, making this camera particularly well-suited to the beginner.

Front	Front

There are two important controls located above the LCD screen - the Slow and 30 buttons. The Slow function makes it possible to view the movement of the subject in slow motion on the LCD monitor. The EX-FC100 effectively pre-records images continually in a buffer for either 1, 2 or 3 seconds, and then plays them back at one of 8 different speeds. Pressing the shutter button then saves the currently displayed image. The Slow mode makes it much easier to capture a fast-moving subject, although note that the resolution is automatically set to 6 megapixels.

The second way to guarantee a good shot of a fast-moving subject is to use the Continuous Shutter mode, activated via the 30 button. In Single Shot mode, the Casio EX-FC100 records just 1 frame per second (at 9 megapixels), but in Continuous Shutter mode it can take up to 30 shots per second, although only at 6 megapixel resolution. The number of shots per second can be set at 30, 15, 10, 5, 3 or auto, and you can set the total number of shots in one burst at 30, 20, 10 or 5. The Prerecord CS option saves up to 25 frames prior to the moment that the shutter button is actually pressed, helping you to avoid missing the action. Once the images have been taken, they are saved in either a Batch containing all of them, or played back at slow speed so you can select the ones that you want to keep by pressing the shutter button. Being able to take 30 images in the blink of an eye produces some amazing results, which you can see for yourself on the Image Quality page.

The Lag correction function effectively speeds up the shooting speed of the Casio EX-FC100. It does this not by physically changing the speed of the shutter, but by pre-recording images when the shutter button is half-pressed, and then saving what happened just before you press the shutter button. The lag time can be set to 0.1, 0.2 or 0.3 seconds, or Off to disable it. It takes some experimentation to figure out which lag time suits your particular shooting style, and as with most of the camera's other high-speed settings, the resulting image is recorded at 6 megapixels.

There are three Best Shot scene modes that are particularly worthy of mention - High-Speed Anti-Shake, High-Speed Night Scene, and High Speed Best Selection. These modes take full advantage of the Casio EX-FC100's continuous shooting speed to improve image quality in traditionally difficult shooting conditions. In the first two modes, the camera combines a number of images taken in burst mode and aligns the position of the subject to form a single, sharp shot. Although these modes can't perform miracles, they do produce notably sharper shots when hand-holding the EX-FC100 in low-light conditions. High Speed Best Selection automatically selects the best image from a set of images taken in burst mode, choosing the sharpest image, and if there is a person present, the image with the subject smiling and not blinking.

Other notable Best Shot modes include Move Out CS and Move In CS, which use the Casio EX-FC100's pre-record functionality to capture a subject as it moves into or out of an adjustable frame on the LCD screen. Multi-motion Image mode automatically selects the same moving subject within a series of multiple images and combines them into a single image, effectively creating a muil-exposure shots that visually tracks the subject's movement.

Memory Card Slot	Battery Compartment

The Casio EX-FC100 features an anti-shake system. Turn it on in the menu system and the EX-FC100 automatically compensates for camera shake, which is a slight blurring of the image that typically occurs at slow shutter speeds. There are three different modes. Camera AS uses the camera's mechanical CMOS-shift system to minimize hand movement, Image AS increases the ISO speed to minimize subject movement, and Auto uses both systems to compensate for both hand and subject movement. In practice I found that it does make a noticeable difference, as shown in the examples on the Image Quality page. You don't notice that the camera is actually doing anything different when anti-shake is turned on, just that you can use slower shutter speeds than normal and still take sharp photos. Leaving the anti-shake system on all the time didn't affect the battery-life too much, with the camera managing just over 270 shots before the rechargeable Lithium-ion battery ran out of power.

There is a single port on the right side of the Casio EX-FC100 (when viewed from the back) which accepts both the USB interface cable required to connect the camera to a printer or computer, and the AV cable. There are no controls on the left side of the EX-FC100. Overall the camera body feels very well-designed and not at all cluttered, despite the presence of the large 2.7 inch LCD, which has a wide viewing angle from left to right, average resolution of 230,000 dots, and is visible in most conditions. There is no optical viewfinder on this model. If you have never used a digital camera before, or you're upgrading from a more basic model, reading the comprehensive and fairly easy-to-follow manual before you start is a good idea. Unfortunately Casio have chosen to cut costs and only supply the full manual as a PDF on a CD, rather than in printed format. Not much use if you're taking pictures and need to find out what a particular option does.

The start-up time from turning the Casio EX-FC100 on to being ready to take a photo is quite quick at around 2 seconds, and it takes about 3 seconds to zoom from the widest focal length to the longest. Focusing is very quick in good light and the camera happily achieves focus indoors or in low-light situations, helped by a powerful focus-assist lamp. It takes about 0.5 second to store an image, allowing you to keep shooting as they are being recorded onto the memory card - there is a very quick LCD blackout between each image. In Continuous mode the camera takes just 1.0 frame per second at the highest image quality, which is slow for this class of camera, although the shooting rate is at least maintained until your memory card is full. Things get much more interesting if you don't mind recording your images at 6 megapixel resolution - then you can shoot at either 3, 5, 10, 15 or an incredible 30 frames per second, as detailed above.

Once you have captured a photo, the Casio EX-FC100 has a good range of options when it comes to playing, reviewing and managing your images. You can instantly scroll through the images that you have taken, view up to 25 thumbnails onscreen at once, and zoom in and out up to 8x magnification. You can view slideshows with different effects and interval settings, edit movies and print a specific frame, adjust the white balance and brightness, and set the print order and the transfer order. You can also protect, rotate, resize, trim, and copy an image. If you've recorded a continuous burst of images, you can divide them up and edit a specific image. The Display button toggles detailed settings information about each picture on and off, such as the ISO rating and white balance, and there is a small histogram available during playback which is helpful in evaluating the exposure. A third press of the Display button shows just the image with no information displayed.

In summary the Casio EX-FC100 is a very stylish and well-built point-and-shoot digital camera that offers a number of innovative high speed modes, some of which are more successful than others.

Image Quality

All of the sample images in this Review were taken using the 9 megapixel Fine JPEG setting, which gives an average image size of around 4Mb.

The Casio EX-FC100 produces images of good quality. The biggest issue is noise and loss of detail at relatively slow ISO speeds. The 1/2.3 inch, 9 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 and 1600 are even worse, with obvious loss of fine detail and even more noise. The Casio EX-FC100 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 just a little red-eye and good overall exposure. The night photograph was poor, with the maximum shutter speed of 4 seconds not being long enough for most after-dark shots, resulting in under-exposure. Anti-shake is a feature that sets this camera apart from its competitors and one that 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 good, allowing you to focus as close as 3 cms away from the subject. The images were a little soft straight out of the Casio EX-FC100 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 5 ISO settings available on the Casio EX-FC100. 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)

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-FC100 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.

9M Fine (4.11Mb) (100% Crop)	9M Normal (2.17Mb) (100% Crop)
9M Economy (1.46Mb) (100% Crop)

Chromatic Aberrations

The Casio EX-FC100 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-FC100 offers a Macro setting that allows you to focus on a subject that is 3cms 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-FC100 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 (37mm)	Flash On - Wide Angle (185mm)
Flash Off - Telephoto (185mm)	Flash On - Telephoto (185mm)

And here are some portrait shots. As you can see, both the Flash On or the Red-eye reduction settings caused a tiny amount of red-eye.

Flash On	Flash On (100% Crop)
Red Eye Reduction	Red Eye Reduction (100% Crop)

Night

The Casio EX-FC100's maximum shutter speed is 4 seconds in the Night Scene Best Shot mode, which is disappointing news if you're seriously interested in night photography, as it doesn't allow you to capture enough light in most situations. The shot below was taken using a shutter speed of 2 seconds at ISO 100. I've included a 100% crop of the image to show what the quality is like.

Night Shot	Night Shot (100% Crop)

Anti Shake

The Casio EX-FC100 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)
1/8th / 37mm
1/5th / 185mm

30 FPS Mode

The Casio EX-FC100 can shoot an incredible 30 frames in just 1 second (the resolution automatically drops to 6 megapixels). After the sequence of shots has been captured, the camera takes around 10 seconds to process them, during which no further pictures can be taken. This montage demonstrates what 30 frames per second can actually capture.

Full Size Image

High Speed Video

In addition to the highest quality HD 720p, 1280x720 pixels at 30fps video mode (example here), the Casio EX-FC100 also offers 3 different high-speed video modes - 480x360 pixels at 210fps, 224x168 pixels at 420fps, and 224x64 pixels at 1000fps. Here are some examples for each setting:

View the 210fps Movie (63.6Mb)

View the 420fps Movie (34.5Mb)

View the 1000fps Movie (20.7Mb)

Sample Images

This is a selection of sample images from the Casio EX-FC100 camera, which were all taken using the 9 megapixel Fine JPEG setting. The thumbnails below link to the full-sized versions, which have not been altered in any way.

Sample Movie & Video

Product Images

Front of the Camera

Front of the Camera / Lens Extended

Isometric View

Isometric View

Rear of the Camera

Rear of the Camera / Image Displayed

Rear of the Camera / Turned On

Rear of the Camera / Main Menu

Rear of the Camera / Main Menu

Top of the Camera

Bottom of the Camera

Side of the Camera

Side of the Camera

Front of the Camera

Front of the Camera

Memory Card Slot

Battery Compartment

Conclusion

The Casio EX-FC100 is certainly one of the most innovative compact cameras of 2009, with an obvious focus on capturing fast-moving subjects and helping you not to miss that decisive moment. The ability to shoot 30 images in one second at the touch of a button is amazing for any camera, DSLR or compact, and if you can't choose the best shot, then the EX-FC100 can do that for you too. The only downsides are the reduction in resolution to 6 megapixels, which applies to all of this camera's high-speed still image functions, and despite that, the fact that memory cards quickly fill up if you regularly use the burst mode. On the video side, the EX-FC100 can record both 720p HD and super slow-motion movies, although both modes are somewhat hampered by huge file sizes, poor or no sound, the inability to optically zoom, and in the case of slow-motion, drastically reduced resolutions. Still, having all of this functionality in such a compact and well-built camera puts the Casio EX-FC100 at the head of the action pack.

Add in the 5x optical zoom lens (though sadly not a wide-angle one), decent LCD screen and intuitive design, and the Casio EX-FC100 seems to be one of the most well-appointed point-and-shoots on the market. Unfortunately the image quality doesn't quite match the feature list, with the EX-FC100 suffering from less than stellar images in low-light due to obvious noise appearing at ISO 200 and faster. Most of this camera's recent main rivals also suffer from this problem, but they typically offer 12 or more megapixels, rather than the 9 megapixels of the EX-FC100. The fastest shutter speed of 4 seconds also limits what you can do after dark, although the innovative High-Speed Night Scene mode partly makes up for this by allowing you to successfully hand-hold the camera in relatively low-light conditions.

$399.99 / £349.99 is a high price to pay for what is essentially a point and shoot compact with merely good image quality, so you really need to ask yourself if you will make full use of all those high-speed shooting options. If the answer is yes, then the Casio EX-FC100 is clearly one of the best cameras around for capturing all of the action.

Ratings (out of 5)
Design	4.5
Features	5
Ease-of-use	4.5
Image quality	4
Value for money	3.5

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Reviews of the Casio EX-FC100 from around the web.

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