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The Casio has what surely must be the world's largest camera LCD screen.
 technofile
Al Fasoldt's reviews and commentaries, continuously available online since 1983

T e c h n o f i l e
At last, an inexpensive camera that takes great photos


Nov. 16, 2008


By Al Fasoldt
Copyright © 2008, Al Fasoldt
Copyright © 2008, The Post-Standard

   If you've been longing for a great digital camera, maybe the stock market is telling you something. Paying a lot when you can pay a little suddenly makes less sense than it ever did before.
   And that's why I'm so intrigued about the camera I've been carrying around in my shirt pocket for the last few weeks. It's the 8.1- megapixel Exilim EX-Z150 from Casio.
   Along with those millions of pixels come an outstanding lens, an easy-to-use menu system and what surely must be the world's largest LCD screen, a monster that covers nearly the entire rear surface of the camera.
   The LCD screen alone is worth the price of admission to this camera's ownership club. It's as sharp and bright as any screen I've every seen, big or small, and is still viewable far off to one side or the other.
   The lens stays out of the way until you turn the camera on, then wakes up and slides out. The camera has one of the widest wide-angle views of any consumer camera I've ever tried. Aiming the camera slightly down while you're taking a wide-angle picture of the soccer team will almost surely capture your own feet in the photo, so make sure your shoes are shined at all times.
   I'd like to be able to say that photos from the $160 EX-Z150 are indistinguishable from the pictures I get from my $1,200 Sony camera, but that would not be true -- because they're clearly better. Dynamic range (how well the camera shows dark and light areas without compromising either one) is far greater, and color accuracy is better as well.
   Among the extra features are a few I could do without, such as a built-in face recognition function, a fireworks photo mode -- come now, how hard is it to point at the sky? -- and a "YouTube capture mode" for videos you want to share.
   But when I skipped the YouTube adjustment and took videos in the camera's highest quality setting, I could hardly tell the difference between the Exilim's images and sample footage I took with my price-is-no-barrier camcorder. If you're looking for a good still camera that can also take the kind of video that will wow them at the Kiwanis Club, look no further.