Casio Exilim EX-S600 Digital Camera Review

The Exilim EX-S600 is the latest addition to Casio's credit card sized range of compact digital cameras. In this review, Gary Wolstenholme takes a look at whether size really is everything.

Specifications

• 6.0 million effective pixels for prints up to A3 size
• 3x zoom lens (35-105mm equivalent)
• SD/MMC card compatible
• 2.2" digital TFT colour LCD
• 0.007 sec. shutter release lag time after focus lock
• USB cradle
• Super-life rechargeable lithium-ion battery
• 90 x 59 x 16.1mm (W x H x D excl. projections, thinnest point 13.7mm)
• Anti Shake DSP
• RRP £229

Build and handling
For such a slim and light weight camera, the EX-S600 feels very solid. The body is made almost completely out of metal with an attractive satin finish. A small metal finger helps give a secure hold and the excellent placement of the controls means one-handed operation is possible.

Display screen
The 2.2inch LCD screen on the back is bright, but seems a little coarse when compared to screens on other digital compact cameras. I found that the sheet of clear acrylic material used to protect the screen was quite reflective. This makes the screen difficult to use in bright conditions as you can see what is behind you reflected on the surface, which reduces contrast.

Auto-focus
Two auto-focus modes are available to choose from, the default spot-area mode and a multi-area mode. The spot-area mode uses a small square located at the centre of the frame to determine focus. This can be locked and recomposed by holding the shutter release lightly pressed. The multi-area mode chooses from nine different points in the frame allowing you to quickly compose for off-centre subjects. Both options are quick and precise although I occasionally had trouble getting the multi-area mode to lock onto what I wanted.

Battery life
From a fully charged battery I managed to get around 240 shots without flash with use of the screen to playback images. There is no viewfinder built into the EX-S600, so it's not possible to turn the screen off to save battery power.

Memory Card
The EX-S600 takes SD cards which fit into a slot beside the battery. The following are write speeds for Jpeg quality settings when using a Sandisk Extreme III card.

Quality setting	Time taken to write to card
6 megapixel Jpeg Fine	1.8secs
6 megapixel Jpeg Normal	1.2secs
6 megapixel Jpeg Economy	1.2secs

I also timed the delay between shots with this camera in the single shot mode.

Quality setting	Shot-to-shot delay
6 megapixel Jpeg Fine	3.66secs
6 megapixel Jpeg Normal	2.02secs
6 megapixel Jpeg Economy	1.72secs

The delay I experienced before I could take another image in single shot mode was a little frustrating in use. The camera can be locked up for a couple of seconds between each shot.

Menu and controls
Ultra-compact cameras can often suffer from fiddly controls as there simply isn't enough space on the back for them, however this is not the case with the EX-S600. Even I don't experience any problems operating the controls with my fat fingers.
There are two menu buttons on the back, one is a standard menu button which provides access to settings for image size and quality and one for the 'Best Shot' menu. Within this there are 30 separate modes to choose from covering almost every photographic scenario you would expect to encounter including portrait, scenery, portrait with scenery, children, sports, candlelight portrait, party, pet, flower, autumn leaves, soft flowing water, splashing water, sundown, night scene, night scene portrait, fireworks, food, text, backlight, anti-shake, high sensitivity, monochrome, retro and twilight.

Zoom lens
The 3x zoom lens built into the EX-S600 gives an equivalent angle-of-view of approximately 35-105mm on a 35mm camera which is pretty standard for a compact camera of this type.

Macro mode

The macro mode doesn't get you all that close to your subject compared to some other compact cameras.

A 100% crop of the the shot to the left which shows the level of detail captured.

Anti-shake DSP

The Anti-shake DSP function is basically a glorified high-sensitivity mode. In situations when light levels drop and camera shake would normally occur, the camera raises the ISO sensitivity to increase the shutter speed. This can still be an effective way of reducing camera shake, the major drawback is that higher sensitivities mean more image noise. The camera bumped the sensitivity up to ISO1600 for the shot on the left, which has resulted in a sharp image. It hasn't suffered greatly from digital noise either.

Image quality
There are three different image quality levels on this camera - Fine, Normal and Economy. All images in this review were taken on Fine and at maximum resolution so that I could see what the camera is capable of producing using the typical settings.

I had to step back to get the whole of the winter gardens in shot which meant I also got the scaffolding to the right. A wider angled lens would have solved this.	Images are bright and colourful without being oversaturated.
The meter has coped well with this difficult scene keeping plenty of shadow detail.	A slight warm tone is sometimes left by the auto white-balance can be quite pleasing for portraits.

Detail

This busy scene was taken using a tripod to determine the level of detail this camera can produce

A 100% crop of the image to the left shows that the camera reproduces reasonable amount of detail.

The level of detail produced is not stunning, but it is certainly acceptable. Very fine detail appears to be smoothed over by noise reduction. Although this produces clean, noise free images it may not be entirely suitable for larger print sizes.

Noise

The following images illustrate the amount of digital noise apparent at each ISO setting. The image to the right is the full image. The crops below are taken from where the green square is.
ISO50	ISO100
ISO200	ISO400

ISO800 and ISO 1600 sensitivities are both available, but they are not selectable by the user. Instead the 'high sensitivity' scene mode will adjust automatically depending on how dim the surroundings are. Because I couldn't select these without changing the light levels, I thought it was unfair to include it in these comparisons. The amount of noise present in images taken between ISO50 and ISO200 is very low, and virtually consistent through that range. When the sensitivity is increased to ISO400 there is a large increase in the amount of noise visible.

Verdict
The diminutive proportions of the Casio Exilim EX-S600 make this very appealling as a camera to just slip into your pocket, and logic dictates that photographers looking for this kind of camera wouldn't appreciate the inclusion of advanced photographic features. 'Best Shot' scene modes, are provided to offer some control over exposure and white balance, but that's about it. The LCD screen isn't the clearest around, but it does the job and the same can be said about the image quality, not startling, but acceptable.

It is incredibly small though. If that is the most important feature you are looking for in a camera, then the EX-S600 is tough to beat.


In summary the positive points of the Casio Exilim EX-S600 are:
It's tiny
Comprehensive set of 'Best Shot' scene modes
Build quality
Good control layout

The negative points:
Poor LCD screen
Less than stunning image quality

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