Digital Camera Review by: Michael Gazzola

 

The Casio Exilim Pro EX-P505 is quite simply a small digi-cam with plenty of features.

Encased in a hard plastic outer, the camera is finished nicely in a flat pearl black surface complimented with hints of chrome. The camera is not covered in buttons, with pretty much only 5 function buttons other than the master dial, capture and power on/off button.

The menu is quite easy to navigate and accessed at the push of a button. There are plenty of options for shooting, along side the standard 'auto' function. The EX-P505 has 8 white balance settings, two of which are fluorescent modes and a manual option.

On the lens of the camera there are two handy buttons, one for controlling the white balance modes and the other for focus modes - macro, infinity, auto and manual.

The camera used in flash mode produces clear, crisp and sharp images. The flash can be controlled by a single button on the top of the camera, and complimented with the option at the push of another button to raise or lower the exposure in thirds to + or - 2 stops.

The EX-P505 does not have a viewfinder as Casio has opted for a larger LCD screen - which is a good move. As digital cameras get smaller, so do viewfinders, so a larger LCD is always going to be appreciated by the photographer.

The LCD on this camera is very flexible. It is not fixed permanently, yet hinged on one side allowing a 180 degree twist and rotatable up to 270 degrees. This allows for low to the ground photography, or being able to hold the camera high above a crowd and still being able to compose a shot by easily viewing the screen.

Image quality on the camera is as sharp as they come for this grade of camera. Once the EX-P505 was set on spot focus and spot metering the results were great every time. At a wider point of focus (like many others in its class) the camera didn't always hit it's target. But at the end of the day, most people use the spot focus function bypassing the issue easily.

Shots taken in a dark room at 400 ISO produce slightly grainy images but still sharp none the less. The ISO options of 50 to 400 are a good range for most situations with the added bonus of great shutter flexibility with variations of 60 seconds to 1/2000 of a second.

There is plenty of fun to be had too with 8 colour filter options. But the most important of these is the B&W function which looks very true to the grey scale tonal range. Many of the EX-P505's competition miss the mark with the B&W option and tend to push a slight sepia tone, which Casio have smartly made an alternate option in the 8 colour filters.

  
Finally, the software bundled with this camera (like the P-700 model) is great. As I have mentioned in previous Casio reviews I really like the ease of use of the 'Photo Loader' software. For those unaware of how it works, once the software is loaded onto your computer it's only a matter of plugging your EX-P505 via a USB connection and the images are automatically uploaded. Furthermore the images are filed into date order and thumbnails displayed in a browser window for easy viewing.

Overall, this camera will more than satisfy those looking for plenty of functionality coupled with a quality image capture, plus easy to use bundled software.

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