Reviews

Casio Exilim EX-P600


Iāll say it right up front: the Casio EX-P600 ($599 list, $549 street) is the best 6-megapixel compact weāve tested to date. It looks fabulous and has everything you could possibly want in a small digital camera at a fair price. Whatās not to like?

Not much. The deeper you go into this cameraās feature set, the more you find that makes you smile. On the surface you have a very appealing, classy-looking unit made of contrasting silver, gray, and chromed segments. From every angle, itās a high-tech jewel. Subtle beveling makes it seem even smaller than it is, slipping easily into a jacket pocket or purse. In the hand, it feels solid as it displays your good taste to the world. P900 owners can expect lots of ooohs and aaahs from friends ÷ itās that pretty.

Start taking some pictures, though, and youāll find this beauty is no light weight. It fires up in under two seconds, captures images at a screaming fast three frames per second. When you are looking for a particular image in-camera, you can scroll through hundreds in seconds; it plays back as fast as a multi-thousand dollar pro camera. Performance overall is superb and completely unexpected in a compact model, blowing away all competitors without breaking a sweat. If speed is your thing but donāt fancy hauling around a hulking D-SLR, you need to look at this camera.

Image quality is very good to excellent for this class of camera. The small imager does impose some limitations that result is a little chromatic aberrations and noise, but Casio has managed to keep these inevitabilities tamed. Results are consistently crisp outdoors, with a slight softness in some indoor shots. There is no low-light focus assist lamp, but the P900 is the first Exilim to offer a standard flash sync port, so external strobes can make indoor sessions much more professional looking. Flesh tones were particularly well rendered without the oversaturation thatās so commonly found these days on consumer digital cameras. An array of bracketing options are on tap for those who want to be absolutely sure they get the best shot, including focus, exposure, white balance, and even special effects. You can also manually tweak ISO sensitivity, sharpness, saturation, contrast, focus, and metering modes if youāre into such things.

Not comfortable with all that photo-jargon? No worries. This camera can even teach you some important basics on the fly. In either aperture or shutter priority mode, a click brings up a nicely illustrated comparison of a sample shot taken at extreme settings. You can immediately grasp the effect of, say, depth-of-field and how it will affect your composition. Itās the best help system Iāve seem on any camera. You donāt even have to turn the camera on its side to display a portrait-oriented photo;; the camera auto-rotates them for you, both inside the camera and on your computer. Why doesnāt every other consumer camera do this?

As if all the above were not enough, the Casio EX-P900 is fully buzzword-enabled: PIM II color management, PictBridge, Epson DirectPrint, and good olā DPOF printing are at your disposal. The internal software is incredibly sophisticated, with a world calendar to set your home or destination city and the ability to play back images taken on a particular day, if you like. For that touch of extra entertainment, thereās an image roulette function that spins through all your images and selects one at random. Sounds goofy but itās actually kind of fun.

The camera sports 9MB of internal flash memory for storing your favorite images. You can choose to make these hidden or visible to all for whatever reasons you may have. Thereās a standard SD slot but the camera does not ship with a card. Donāt skimp here; buy the high-speed 512MB card this camera deserves and youāll never regret it.

Iāve saved my favorite feature for last. Casio has developed an information overlay in shooting mode thatās clearly inspired by science fiction movies. The EX Finder is enabled with a click of the display button, whereupon your image is graphically overlaid with a chronometer-like circle that graphically shows you depth of focus, surrounded by a live histogram, graphics displaying exposure compensation, shutter speed, aperture, macro status, flash mode, and a focus reticle. It is unutterably cool and truly useful, too. This flashy feature will sell them truckloads of cameras. The EX Finder is the icing on an already tasty and nutritious cake this reviewer finds completely irresistible.

öEdison Carter

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