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Casio goes high-speed with its pocket megazoom

The high-speed still- and video-shooting abilities of previous Casio cameras finds their way into a new compact with a wide-angle 10x zoom lens.

Joshua Goldman Managing Editor / Advice
Managing Editor Josh Goldman is a laptop expert and has been writing about and reviewing them since built-in Wi-Fi was an optional feature. He also covers almost anything connected to a PC, including keyboards, mice, USB-C docks and PC gaming accessories. In addition, he writes about cameras, including action cams and drones. And while he doesn't consider himself a gamer, he spends entirely too much time playing them.
Expertise Laptops, desktops and computer and PC gaming accessories including keyboards, mice and controllers, cameras, action cameras and drones Credentials
  • More than two decades experience writing about PCs and accessories, and 15 years writing about cameras of all kinds.
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Joshua Goldman

Casio

The Exilim EX-FH100 is very similar to 2009's FC100 in features, but out front is a 24mm-equivalent lens with a 10x zoom range. Essentially it's a marriage of the FC100 and Casio's H10. But that's not the whole story.

Watch this: Casio Exilim EX-FH100

The FH100 features a high-speed back-illuminated 10.1-megapixel CMOS sensor (the FC100's wasn't backlit). The back illumination improves overall sensitivity, which should reduce noise levels in low-light photos. The speed of the sensor helps it shoot up to 30, 9-megapixel images at 40fps. It also enables up to 1,000fps high-speed movie recording, though at a size of 224x64 pixels they're of limited use; the 420, 240, and 120fps movies are better. Other high-speed shooting modes include Night, Portrait, and Lighting. All three work by taking several quick shots and then combining them to get a single, improved photo. Night and Portrait are for what they sound like they're for, but Lighting is for balancing exposure of bright and dim subjects in a scene.

Then there are a bunch of other extras like raw capture (.DNG), manual and semimanual shooting modes, 720p HD-quality movie recording at 30fps, built-in stereo mic, Mini-HDMI output, mechanical image stabilization, and a 3-inch LCD.

Will it be a breakout product? We'll have to see when it arrives in April/May. The price is certainly right at $349.