Digital Camera Review by: Michael Gazzola

 

Casio has raised the bar with its new and very stylish EX-S100. The stainless steel body with hints of chrome is the best looking 3.2 mega pixel camera I have reviewed to date. It is beautifully designed, with every built in feature well thought out giving the dominate camera companies in the market real competition.

Released in August 2004, it is the smallest 2.8x optical zoom camera in the world producing high quality images to back up its body work. Furthermore, it has Casio's newly developed transparent ceramic lens technology, resulting in a thinner camera body. The Casio S100 also comes with a bright, large 2 inch LCD screen which takes up two thirds of the back of the camera, and a super efficient navigation system that will appeal to almost all who take the time to sample it. The general shooting controls are all where they should be, within reach and usually only one press of a button away from most main functions the photographer would need.

Image quality on all ISO settings produced great results in daylight, where the 200 and 400 ISO settings are the only real options for indoor photography. The 400 ISO has minimal grain, which would produce more than acceptable photo print images and be comparable to 400 ISO speed film grain. The optional sharpening tool is also quite effective, as well as the in camera image trimming or slide show viewing.

The USB cradle which accompanies the camera is also worth mentioning. This too is very stylish, with a white and chrome finish. It is very easy to use, and at a push of a button once the camera is mounted onto it, all of your images are easily and automatically uploaded to your computer. The 'Photoloader' software is a favourite of mine, and is one that casio has used now with a number of cameras with plenty of success.

In all the good, there is only one minor flaw almost not worth mentioning and that is, that there is no viewfinder. As Casio seems to be applying larger LCD screens to all of their new range, I really don't think the view finder will be missed as the large 2 inch screen more than compensates, and at the end of the day gives the photographer a bigger image area to preview when composing a photograph.

I was truly satisfied with every facet this camera had to offer, from quality packaging, a fantastic finish on the body to the image capture quality and the bundled software. It's well worth considering if your in the market for a digital camera, that will easily go unnoticed in your shirt pocket!

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