Customer Reviews

Casio Exilim EX-S3 3MP Digital Camera and Docking Station

5 star:		(24)
4 star:		(7)
3 star:		(3)
2 star:		(1)
1 star:		(5)

 

 

I was the owner of an EX-S2 and upgraded to the new EX-S3. This camera is simply the easiest digital camera to use for the non-professional photographer. Sure you other cameras out there can take better pictures, but for those of use who aren't Ansel Adams this is the one you want to buy. The 3.2MP quality is more than enough for the portrait shots and candid shots we all love to take. No mess with disposable cameras, developing, etc. Simply point and click and capture that special moment. I personally wanted a camera that I could carry with me everywhere without bulky attachments, or cases, something you could keep in your pocket or in briefcase or glovebox for instant pictures. Life is fun, share your spontaneous moments! The SD card is a great plus, it's durable case is lightweight (Less heavy than the EX-S3 which seems sturdier) but still durable. The LCD screen is lighter too, now made with high-impact plastic instead of glass. Battery life is great and recharging/downloading is a snap! The coupling shot works great and with a 256MB card, you can store over 2100 pictures in Economy mode or 200 in Fine Large Format mode. I highly recommend!

If you even know me for just one day, you'd know that I love taking pictures. I have 2 other digicams (Olympus D450 and Canon S30, plus the Verizon vx6000 camera phone) and 7 or so film cameras. Having kids, I needed a camera that I will *always* have with me, regardless of the ocassion or what I'm wearing. I was very excited when the S3 became available and snapped up this camera about 8 months ago. 8,000 pictures later, I'm confident that I can give it a pretty much fair assessment.

THE ROLE: The role for this camera for me is to be always available for group and family shots, indoors or outdoors. With it's size and speed, it fits that role perfectly. It's inexpensive enough that it's almost disposable, in a sense that if I lose it I would definately miss the pictures in it more than the camera itself.

PORTABILITY: The reason I bought this camera is the convenience. As you know, It's very small. I carry it everywhere, including at home. You never know when the baby is going to do something cute! In that front the S3 is excellent. Very portable and always available.

IMAGE QUALITY: Get real. With a tiny fixed focus, fixed focal-length lens, I didn't expect the S3 to have the same image quality as the $1000 Canon 300D DSLR or even my Canon S30. However, I was pleasently surprised. The image quality, especially for what I use it for, is excellent. For family, friends group shots, it's more than just okay. 8x10 enlargements is no problem. As I found it, fix focus can acually be a benefit (speed, huge depth-of-field). Having a video mode is essential for me, but read in pro/con section about the video.

PRODUCT QUALITY: However, there are some serious quality problems witht this camera. First of all, over the length of 6 months, the lens got dirty internally, and small grey spots shows up in the same location of every picture. I could shake the camera and got the dust to move around, but I couldn't get rid of it. Then, the flash stops firing reliabily. Then, the case turns yellow in the front, where I rest my middle finger when holding the camera. Not wanting to part with it, I hesitantly sent it back to Casio. EIGHT LONG WEEKS and many phone calls later, I finally got the camera back. The dust is gone, the flash problem is fixed, and they even replaced the camera case. But the amount of time it took was no excuse - I missed the entire holiday season (Thanksgiving, Christmas) on this camera (I had others cameras to work with). So when I said that I've had it for 8 months, it's actually 6 months, plus 2 in the shop.

Pros:
- The size is great
- Image quality is excellent for a fix-lens, fix-focal-length camera
- Fast (start-up, shotting, navigating through pictures)
- Conversation piece
- The most excellent www.exilim.jp site, especially the Exilim Avenue web magazine (in Japanese language)
- Movie mode which Casio eliminated in ther Z4U and S20U models. But see cons.
- Spare battery is cheap on eBay for about seven bucks each. I have 4 spares but rarely use it because the battery life is excellent (much better than my Canon S30)
- Inexpensive

Cons:
- My camera lens got dirty internally. Until I sent it back to Casio, it had small grey spots in each picture and was very annoying.
- Over time, the camera case tarnished and turns yellow
- Repair services, if you ever needed, is SLLOOW. Took them 8 weeks to fix my camera
- No true thumbnail view of every picture (only calendar-view)
- Casio-branded cases not widely available in the US
- The video quality is quite low compare to the other digicams. The Motion JPEG artifacts is more apparent than with my Canon S30. However, once you convert it from AVI (MJPEG) to MPG (MPEG-1) with VirtualDub, the quality dramatically improves. It became VCD / NTSC quality and the JPEG artifacts actually went away. Most amazing.

Overall, it's an excellent camera that I still carry with me daily. However, I would only recommend this as being your secondary, almost-disposable, take-along camera considering its shortcomings. I'm personally looking forward to the next batchs of Canon cameras in 2004 to add another one to my collection.

Pros:

- Great design. Very sleek. Large LCD is an attention grabber.

- Portability. Very light and thin. The actual size is not as small as you'd think. But the lightness of the camera and it's thinness makes this maybe the most portable camera. You can just put it in your front shirt pocket and not feel like anything's in there.

- Lots of cool functions. The best shot mode is awesome. It allows you to make your own settings, and use it at ease. ISO levels are pretty decent too, considering it's such a small cam.

- I thought that the quality of the pics were very good. I'm merely a beginner, so this may not mean much, but I really thought this cam took some nice pictures, and I didn't even set it at the highest resolution. Perhaps, if you are really into photography, you may notice, but if you are, you probably would want to go with the SLR's anyway.

Cons:

- Too small? Well, this is actualy a good thing, but because it's so portable, it's really easy to lose. I actually lost my first Ex-3 on my first week, then bought another one, only to lose it again! Luckliy, I found it the second time around, but it just shows u, how easy it is to misplace it.

- Lack of a good case. First, it doesn't come with a case. You have to buy it. But even the ones that are out in the market, are not that great IMO. The cases make the camera bulkier, kind of beating the purpose of having this camera.

- No Zoom. Yes, there's digital zoom, but like everyoneelse in this site has mentioned, is practically useless. You mind as well just take the picture normally, then zoom it up in photoshop. It'll give you pretty much the same effect. I found zoom to be quite a necessary feature in photography, after i played around with my friend's zoomable camera.

- No burst mode. yes, it's really fast and easy to turn it on and take a picture, but you still have to hold the camera steady for like a second or two, before it actually takes the picture. For example, if you wanted to take a picture of someone who didn't want to (hehe), you would probably take a picture of them on a surprise, but by the time the camera actually takes the picture, they'll have their hands on their face. So it's not 'instant', as I thought it would be. I think for it to be instant, it needs 'burst mode'. Comparable Kyocera cam has this.

- The recharger/USB port is cumbersome. It's nice when u have it at home, but if you were travelling, you'd have to carry that whole cradle with u, just so u can recharge ur batteries.

Conclusion:

Suffice it to say, I bought the camera again for the second time, after I lost it the first time. This should tell you how much I like the camera. It's really the most portable camera out there, outside of those 1 mega pixel spy cams, and its features and sleek look, make it a true winner. But for my next cam, I'm going to make sure that it has zoom capability and burst mode.

I bought this camera to take with me when I went on a military deployment. Often, I need a camera that is not obvious and that can be switched on, and a picture taken quickly, then stowed. This camera fits in my pocket (with Casio's case for cover) and I can pull it out, point and shoot in a matter of ten seconds. The pictures are fine if all you want are snapshots, and I have also had luck with 8 x 10s. The camera will take great pictures in low light situations. It has a powerful flash that I liken to a blast of light - sometimes I wish there could be a happy medium between natural light (when it's a little dark) and the flash (too bright). But if you need to throw some light at a distance it won't let you down. Setting the various modes for the type of shot you want (landscape, portrait, night scene, sepia, black and white and others) is intuitive. It even has a mode that will take a picture of a background, then on the next shot will place a subject in that shot. However, it's easy to confuse the on and the shutter buttons, and I have had a really hard time getting the mode to switch out of "record" and back to snapshot. That is my biggest frustration with this camera, and it isn't that bad. All in all, if you want an easy, portable camera with great battery life, this is the right one. If you are an "artiste" with a camera, look into a Canon or an Olympus. Incidentally, buy the recharger case from Casio and forget the docking station if you don't have much space when traveling. The tiny recharger fits the battery (so it's smaller than the camera itself). I bought an additional battery but I have never had the one run down. The SD card that I purchased for extra memory can be read by any standard card reader, so if you don't want any more photo software on you home computer, don't worry, just download the photos from the card and bypass the Kodak software disk. Either way, Casio has made this camera so easy to use that even if all you buy is a case and an SD card, you will be just fine. Highly recommended.

Pros:
Smallest high-res camera on the market
Great USB cradle for simple transfer of pictures
Takes nice close-up photos in good lighting
Crowd pleaser - sure to elicit oohs and ahhs, if that is what you are seeking
Very fast power up - turn it on and start shooting
Pretty good battery life
Nice 2" LCD
Very convienent

Cons:
Lenses could be better for the price
Lack of controls (may be a plus for the beginner)
Battery takes longer than average to charge
Could be easy to lose from pocket

Conclusion - there are many better quality 3 megapixel cameras at this price level, but you are paying for the size. If you are less concerned about absolute picture quality and want something that you might enjoy taking with you for a night on the town, this just may be your camera.

I would never take pics if this camera wasn't so small and light. Easy downloads, and takes fabulous pics on high definition. I'm less pleased with pics on Medium or Low definition. They come out blurry and grainy -- moreso than other cameras. Also, because it's so light, you have to be extremely careful not to move when taking pics -- tons of them come out blurred, even when the viewer doesn't show it. It also has trouble figuring out what to focus on. If there's depth (e.g., people closer & farther away that you want focus on), it always seems to choose the wrong level of focus. And, no matter what I try, red eye is terrible. Since it's so tiny and thus unstable when resting on its side, it takes quite a bit of maneuvering to use the self-timer.

On the plus side, when you get a clear photo they are amazing. I get clarity at poster size. It's easy to use & figure out, even for less technologically advanced users. The software is nice, the dock works without effort, and it is just so tiny that I take more photos than I otherwise would. That, in and of itself, makes the other issues worthwhile.

1) when you know it's going to be special and you have your camera with you
2) when it happens on the spot and you don't!

I bought this camera because my nikon coolpix 880, while it takes great pictures, is too bulky for me to carry everywhere. The ZX-S3 is smaller than my wallet and fits comfortably in the back pocket of my jeans. It is definitely "wearable", as Casio calls it.

HOWEVER it takes terrible photos, and my assessment is that their 3.2M pixel rating is a bald-faced lie. Not having optical zoom in a camera of this size is to be expected, but I figured that the high resoltion would make up for it because I could zoom and crop later. WRONG.

Take a photo with the ZX-S3, open it in photoshop, and set zoom to 100% (i.e. 1 screen pixel per file pixel). It is PIXELATED (about 4:1) AT 1:1 ZOOM!! The image is not merely bad, but terrible. Even when just viewing them on-screen the quality is unacceptable.

The image was SO bad using the camera's default settings that I was sure I'd done something wrong, so I spent some more time fiddling with it to see if there were any tweaks I should make. It was already at max resolution - I tried changing the quality from "normal" to "fine" but it made no difference.

I'm willing to compromise on picture quality to get a smaller camera, but not this much!! I'm going to return it tomorrow and order a Canon S400 instead. A friend of mine has one of their older elph models, and while not quite as tiny as the casio, it takes great pics.

If you are looking for a digital replacement for your point and shoot 35mm, this is it. If you don't want to click 100 buttons and figure out 50 menus, this is it. If however, you are looking for the prints that you can oooh and ahhh about every detail in a closeup of nosehairs, this may not be the camera for you.

So far I've been stuck inside with the Boston temperatures, but I've managed to take about 150 pictures in the week or so I've had it. To get good closeups, the flash is somewhat harsh, but if you use the red-eye mode, it seems much better.

You can assign functions to the main control, so you can click from flash to red eye mode, to force no flash in a couple of clicks. Also, the other mode dial can control another feature of your choosing. Its a better UI for all of the controls than my Olympus C5050 (my photographer in me digital camera).

Overall the quality of shots is good, not excellent, but I don't think they were meant to be excellent.

The reason I bought the camera was for the fixed focus lens believe it or not. I didn't want to mess with a zoom, and this makes picture taking very fast as well. You click the button, it takes the picture. No lag as with other digital cameras trying to figure out what to focus on.

Also, the movies are more useful than I first thought, good enough to send to grandparents and archive for future moments. I can't wait to take this outside when it warms up!

I would recommend this as a 2nd digital, or as a primary digital for someone wanting a very portable, easy camera to use.

I can't get over all of the fun and useful features packed into this tiny camera...seriously, it weighs 2.5 ounces! Before I bought the Casio Exilim , I had a bulky and basic 2mp Kodak EasyShare Camera. My Kodak took nice pictures, but didn't offer much more. And it was way too big to tuck into my purse. The Casio can fit in my smallest evening bag & has tons of extras, like sepia and black and white pix, the ability to take two pictures and merge them into one, take short video clip with audio and the list goes on! If only it had optical zoom....but with all the other features this camera has, it is great anyway!!!

Lovely camera, great photos while it lasts. Fits wonderfully in your pocket. But that's exactly the problem--the camera seems to be extremely heat or moisture sensitive. Though I was careful not to carry it with anything else that might scratch it, small "blooms" or spots gradually form on the LCD display and inside the lens, ruining both the viewfinder and the pictures. Perhaps this is the reason they have discontinued this model.