New Casio Exilims the smallest and speediest yet
High-speed shooting in compact designs make these potentially hot gadgets to have in 2009.
When they launched, Casio's high-speed Exilim models with frame rates of 1,000-plus frames per second (fps) wowed all but the purists in the digital photo community. But cameras like the EX-F1 and EX-FH20 are bulky and the features too difficult to use for many. So Casio put the circuitry in the dryer on High and popped out a sensor and chipset that packs its high-speed technology into tiny, easier-to-use digital camera packages: the 9-megapixel EX-FC100 and EX-FS10.
The higher-end FC100 has a 5X zoom lens and sensor-shift optical stabilizer; the much thinner FS10 uses a 3X zoom and no stabilization. Otherwise, the cameras have the same feature set, with novel inclusions like 30fps burst shooting at 6 megapixels; and Lag Correction, a user-determined prerecord interval, which compensates for both slow human reflexes and hardware sluggishness. The cameras both have slow motion preview, which records at a high frame rate and plays back slowly to allow you to pick and save the best frame; and High-Speed Best selection, which automatically chooses the sharpest photo with wide-eyed and smiling people in it from a burst. They also shoot 720p movies for more traditional motion capture.
When they ship in March, the $349.99 EX-FS10 will be available in blue, gray, red, and white, and the $399.99 EX-FC100 will be available in gray and white.