Customer Reviews

Casio Exilim EX-S500 5MP Digital Camera with 3x Anti Shake Optical Zoom (Orange)

5 star:		(49)
4 star:		(15)
3 star:		(6)
2 star:		(5)
1 star:		(8)

 

 

I bought this camera for my wife who needs no more than a point and shoot. I wanted something she could throw in her purse and take everywhere so she would take more pics of our boys. I own a Nikon D70 (which is an awesome camera) but it is too big to for my wife and even for me sometimes.

I figured if I was going to spend $500 (by the time I bought a memory card, case, etc...) on another camera I wanted to make sure it was as good as I could get in an ultra compact camera. So I actually bought 3 cameras, took about 75 pics apiece (half indoors and half outdoors). I took the best 20 pics (10 indoor and 10 outdoor) and got them developed. The three cameras were the Casio EX-S500, Nikon S1 and the Canon SD400 - I had no preference but since I already owned a Nikon I was pulling for that one a little.

Out of the three the Nikon and Casio were easily the best. The Canon SD400 did not really compare in my opinion. The pics were soft and not very sharp. The exterior case of the Canon also seemed cheaper than the other two. It was a very hard decision between the Nikon and Casio. Both had sharp pics but the Casio did seem to be a tad sharper...it was honestly hard to tell. The Casio was also a little easier to use...especially the menus on the back. We ultimately kept the Casio (took the other two back) because the pics were very good for a small camera and my wife liked the feel, look and size and felt it was easier to use.

P.S. I would have been happy with either camera.
P.S.S. All three cameras's had problem with red-eye but I think all cameras will at this size.
P.S.S ***If you buy this camera I would definitely recommend you click on the menu button on the back and increase the contrast, sharpness and saturation to +1. The range is -2 to +2. That made a big difference in the colors jumping out and once it is changed it stays that way until you change it again.

Pro:
- Very compact: the face of the camera is about the size of a playing card, and it's a bit less thick than a deck. Compared to the Canon SD400, it is slightly longer and somewhat less thick.
- The stainless-steel body is very solidly built
- Competent image quality; good sharpness and color
- Nice big LCD screen
- You're ready to take a picture within a second of when you press the power button
- The docking cradle is really convenient
- The menu system is very responsive and easy to use
- Easily accessed "Best Shot" menu gives you a large selection of preconfigured scene modes, and you can define your own modes as well.
- The camera has a number of small, thoughtful features that aren't advertised (the "unexpected extra", if you will). For example, the "quick shutter" function allows you to emergency skip the auto-focus and take a picture instantly, possibly saving you from missing a precious moment. On a similar note, the movie recorder can be configured to include the 5 seconds *before* you press the record button. "Business shot" can automatically straighten out pictures of business cards, whiteboards, etc. taken at an angle. You can turn on a live histogram while composing a shot.
- Casio's accessories, such as batteries and carrying cases, are not *as* overpriced as they are from most digicam manufacturers.

Con:
- Merely competent image quality; higher ISOs and image stabilization can result in very noticeable noise
- It's small and solid enough to carry around in your pocket, but for $400, do you really want to?
- The docking cradle is an extra thing that you have to bring when you travel. (As far as I can tell there's no way to charge the battery without the cradle using the equipment in the box; I'm sure they'll sell you something, though) That stated the cradle is pretty small and light.
- I am a little worried about the LCD screen, which actually juts out slightly from the camera body. You will want a carrying case.
- The image stabilization is a mysterious function; we know it's digital, but it's not clear if there is an accelerometer in the camera detecting and correcting camera shake, or if it's purely a gimmicky after-effect, like digital zoom, or somewhere in between.
- You can't change the optical zoom level while recording a movie. Also, the image stabilization does not apply to movies.
- No viewfinder: it would be nice to have the option of saving battery power by not using the LCD screen.
- The power button is too easily pressed by accident when putting the camera in a case, etc.
- Some of the "Best Shot" modes have given me worse results than the default metering; particularly indoors without flash.
- The manual for the camera is in PDF form only, on the included CD. There is only a bizarre and totally worthless "Basic Reference" printed booklet.

In summary: this is a fantastic little snapshot camera. You probably won't want to rely on it for artsy-fartsy photos because of its fine, but not outstanding image quality. But it has a lot of thoughtful touches for the user, and you should strongly consider it if you're looking for an ultra-compact camera.

If you're a pro or pro-amateur photographer, you're likely tired of carrying bulky camera gear, but wish you could have a "back pocket" slim camera with you always. That's the point of this gem: at 1/2" thick, it's about the highest quality in the slimmest design available.

Naturally, the "out of the box" configuration sets images up for mass market consumers printing on cheap home inkjets: too much contrast, with overbright highlights. But this camera simplifies getting the perfect exposure if you make three simple tweaks:

1. Turn on the real-time histogram function. This allows you to see the image exposure plotted on a graph, with dark shades at the left and bright colors at the right. If the graph hits the right, some part of the image will be overexposed. If it hits the left, something will be underexposed.

2. [optional] Change the default contrast value to -1. This will give you more exposure latitude -- brights will be a little less bright, and darks a little less dark, so more shades will fit in your exposure. It's easy to boost contrast after the fact, even free Picasa software will do it. But you can't get back over/under exposed pixels.

3. Assign EV (exposure value) compensation to the L/R (left and right) thumbpad keys. With this change, you can fiddle with the exposure on-the-fly as you're looking at the image and histogram. Typically, a -0.7 to -1.0 value will give you the brightest image without over exposing highlights.

With these three (or optionally, two) quick image quality changes, the results will satisfy even a pro photographer enough to warrant keeping this wallet-thin camera glued to the hip.

PROS:

- Slimmest (1/2" thin!) quality for the money
- Burnt orange color welcome after blacks and silvers
- Fantastic image quality for its size after above tweaks
- High quality MPEG4 (use free MSFT MovieMaker, PSP9, etc., to downsize for sharing)
- Photo-album slideshow mode when docked
- Calendar layout of thumbnails to quickly locate recent pics
- 30+ "best shot" groups of presets for almost any picture situation
- Make your own additional image presets or groups of presets to add to the "best shot" menu
- Whiteboard/scanner/business card mode that makes paper or whiteboards white and fixes perspective to appear straight
- Excellent battery life

CONS:

- Camera needs the base to sync w/ computer or recharge (-1 star for this, sorry)
- "Full flash" recycle time is long (because the flash is remarkably powerful)
- Some bodies seem to have a soft-focus problem (but I've only seen this with bodies purchased at retail warehouses, not ones purchased from camera stores)

I purchased the Casio back in November. The first time I used it was at my parent's anniversary party, which was in a restaurant at night. I was having to take pictures where the setting was so dark, I could not see the image in the viewfinder, I am a photographer and brought my Nikon D-50 along just in case. So not to lose any moments, I used both cameras for each picture I took (getting a sore neck from the D-50!) I plugged both cards into the photo kiosk at a local retailer, and am absolutely unable to tell of any difference in quality. Now folks, I paid $1,000 for the D-50 and Nikkor lense. This little casio has been with me at bars for birthday parties, concerts with crazy lights, even high school sporting events. I can honestly say it is the best camera I have ever owned. I have dropped it a few times, and it has held up very well. I would recommend getting a clear screen cover for the display screen on back as to avoid scratching it. I ended up paying $8.00 for a PSP screen protector kit, and cut down to fit. I have 3 more screens in storage now. The best feature is that when you turn the unit on, in under a second, you can snap a picture, and it will turn out great (came in really handy at a recent rock concert). It is no bigger than a wallet so I am able to carry it everywhere. I did much research on this purchase and am extremely satisfied by my decision. I would highly recommend. I also have several technical Casio watches, and I have always been very impressed by Casio's superior customer service. If you have windows XP, you won't need to load the software on your CPU, I have found it easier to use windows media. I would recommend saving the manual on your desktop (250+ pages) in a pdf file. I actually printed it out, and learned the things this camera can do are limitless.

We've had this camera for 6 months. We loved it. Then the ring around the lens popped off after simply turning it on; it could not be reattached. The machinery inside was exposed. Casio took it back since it was under warranty, but, after we sent it to them, we were told that the lens ring was not covered. Even with their warranty in hand that stated everything (excluding the battery and power cord I believe) is covered, Casio insisted we pay nearly $200. In addition, we have been waiting 2 months to get the camera back (we still don't have it). We're so very frustrated. I would pursue them legally if I could justify the expense and effort. We are using the only alternative left to us of warning people about Casio's actions.

At first I really liked this camera. It was nice and small and took decent pictures, although everything was white-washed when I used the flash.

After using the camera a total of 4 times in under 2 months, the belt that operates the extension of the lens slipped off track while I was zooming in for a shot. I assumed that since the camera came with a one year warranty, I would be ok. Not so.

Casio wanted to charge me $220.85 in order to put the belt back on track. They said that since the problem had to do with the lens, it wasn't covered under warranty. The lens wasn't cracked, I never dropped the camera, and it was in otherwise perfect condition. I tried explaining this multiple times whenever I could actually reach someone in customer service, but they insisted that they didn't have to honor the warranty. Not only that, but they wouldn't send the camera back to me unless I paid $8 for the return shipping!

I strongly suggest buying a different brand of camera. I now use a Nikon that was half the price of the Casio, and it takes great pictures. Not only that, but I had my Nikon in my flak jacket for two months while in Iraq and it still works perfectly fine.

In my experience, Casio makes a low quality camera and doesn't honor their own warranty.

I have had this camera for two months. I bought it to take to Cancun instead of my bulky camera, and I love it! It is so small and slim that it will slide right into your back pocket and you forget that it's there (but not the best place to carry it!) I keep it in my purse at all times, and I've used it almost daily. I am definitely a point and shoot kind of girl, and this camera makes that so easy. No waiting for warm-up, no lag between pics. It has so many settings to choose from (and they're easy to understand!) that one of them is bound to be perfect. I usually just leave mine on the automatic setting, but you should probably put it on anti-shake if you're not using a flash indoors or your picture might not turn out as sharp as you would like.

The camera is very easy to operate -- even a caveman could do it :) It takes decent videos too. I don't know how long you can video, I guess until your memory card is full. I don't think the camera limits your time.

If there are ANY problems with your pictures, it is really simple to correct them, including red eye, color, etc. by downloading the free program from [...]. Flash distance seems to be just fine, and it also takes good pictures when it's dark.

Charging the camera on its little dock and getting the pictures onto your computer is so easy that even I can do it, which is saying something! This is the kind of camera I could give to my mother and say "figure it out", and she actually could.

This is the 3rd generation of Exilim cameras that my wife and I have owned, and I have to say we are very impressed with it. It has everything we came to expect in Exilim cameras...compactness, style, ease-of-use, long battery life, and good photo quality.

I have to say that it is remarkable how fast this camera is..as soon as you push the power button it is ready to go. The LCD is huge and beautiful. Also, the quality of the videos is AWESOME! You would think that the videos are being taken with a handheld cam...but no...its just this tina camera. :) Also, the audio quality is excellent with the camera.

One final note...it is true what they say about taking pictures of paper with this camera. If you take a picture of a page in the phone book, you can read the numbers on the page using the cameras LCD. The quality is awesome...it looks like the page was scanned. Very cool.

If I had enough money, I'd buy another one of these cameras for myself (b/c it technically belongs to my wife). :)

I had a perfectly good Canon Powershot 3MP that worked fine. I purchased this camera for three specific features. I wanted to be able to use the zoom without a tri-pod. The anti-shake function allows me to use the optical zoom and the digital zoom without a tri-pod without having the shot come out blurry. I secondly wanted to be able to capture action shots without using movie mode. The quick shutter function on this camera is terrific. If it is a series of shots you wish to capture this camera has a feature that will allow you to take a short movie and then make turn it into stills automatically. The third thing I wanted to be able to do was to switch between shooting environments using pre-sets. This camera has 15 pre-sets and I find them VERY useful. But let me say here that a couple of them are not as useful as they could be.

The candlelight portrait preset is for use with a tripod or for when someone is sitting perfectly still. The sample photo is of someone blowing out candles on a birthday cake. I've tried very similar shots and they came out totally blurry. The shutter speed is too slow for the motion of the person bending over and blowing out the candles. If your taking some sort of still life photos by candlelight, this is a great setting.

The "Sensitive" setting is suppose to allow you to take photos in low light indoor situations. It doesn't work when you are holding the camera by hand.

The Party setting works but without blur only if you have the anti-shake on and even then sometimes shots come out blurry depending on where you are relation to the light source.

The ease of use is incredible. I read the manual through once and starting shooting good shots right away.

The screen is bright and large. You can really see whether or not your shots came out blurry. This was an issue with my last camera.

While the camera is compact, it is not compact and portable. If your intention is to take photos which you intend to share on someone's television or computer other than your own, you will need to take the charger stand with you along with the USB cord for the charger stand. This thing has no way to directly connect via USB. That means that you can not plug the camera into just anyone's computer and download photos nor can you just jack the camera into any AV IN lines and share photos on the TV screen. Not only that but the USB cord that goes into the stand is not standard. When on trips I used to take my Canon to any drugstore and use the digital photo kiosk which has cords that you plug into the USB port of your camera to download photos onto the kiosk for printing. None of the cords that typically come with these kiosks is going to fit the charger stand of this camera. You have to manually take the storage chip out in order to do kiosk printing. This is not that big of a deal but the door to the storage chip insert is kind of flimsy. I would greatly suggest that on trips you take the charger stand and the USB cord with you (they are pretty small and light). I honestly believe that if you open and close the storage chip door on this camera repeatedly, it will break.

You don't need to install any of the software that comes with the camera if you have XP. XP recognizes the camera and will download the photos through the photo wizard. The download speed with this fatter USB cord is very fast, which is nice.

The photo imaging software that comes with the camera is totally primative. Don't even bother installing it. The Ulead light movie editing software is nice enough to make me consider upgrading to the full Ulead software. It allows you to edit your movies, add effects and then burn a dvd.

I did a lot of research before choosing this camera and I am extremely pleased with my purchase.

I bought EX-S500 and although I didn't get such a good deal on the price, I held on to it because it is extreemly versatile. Mpeg 4 quality videos and a Lithium Hydride battery which under a full charge yields almost limitless power. I used it for three days, took 65 videos + 255 photos and it still had 3/4 power left. CCD image quality is excellent.