Sunday, March 23, 2008


Casio EX-S10

It's been a couple OF years now since the LAST super-skinny camera came along, the Sony DSC-T7. We loved it. It was ridiculously thin AND yet felt incredibly solid. Trouble IS, it's skinniness was also its undoing - most people found it impossible to hold steady, resulting in more than the average number of blurry photos.Thus the first super-skinny camera was also the last... until now. Casio's new Exilim EX-S10 IS a slender 15mm thick, which IS slim enough that you won't feel it in your pocket. But does it suffer from the same problem that doomed this breed the first time round?
Not learning from mistakesIn a word, yes. The very same problem of camera shake afflicts the S10 - you simply can't hold it steady, especially WITH cold hands. TO compound the situation, the slimming-down process seems TO have meant there was NO room FOR image stabilisation OF ANY kind. The result IS that you'll find many images at slower shutter speeds with ghosting.The S10's images themselves ARE blessed WITH lovely, vibrant colours AND reasonable detail - NOT class-LEADING, but NOT terrible. Less pleasing IS the fact that the quality degrades so sharply AT ISO 400 AND above. Most OF its competitors falter AT ISO 800, but by 400 the Casio has such prominent digital artefacts AND noise that you'll wish you'd used the flash.

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