Digital Camera Review by: Michael Gazzola

 

Good things come in small packages. And Casio have delivered! The new EX-S770 is super slim at just 13mm and is all about style. The wider curved top right corner, the 2.8 inch wide screen LCD and very easy navigation shows that plenty of thought has gone into this camera.

The 230,000-pixel 2.8 inch LCD is most definitely a big selling point as it takes up around 4/5ths of the back. The screen is very bright and clear in almost all situations and is probably the best we’ve reviewed to date. In low light the screen does become grainy but provides you with a view to still frame a scene properly.

The gloss finish stainless steel body gives the camera a first class look and the user the confidence that the camera is capable of taking a bump – however we did not give it a ‘bump’ test! The buttons on the camera are also stainless steel and mostly sit level with the body giving it an aerodynamic look.

The navigation is excellent. Like many cameras there are a few key buttons for working the main functions but Casio have gone one step further and provided an on-screen menu side - that can be turned off or left on. The menu does not intrude into the screen, as the 2.8 inch LCD has plenty of room and lists key functions in very easy to read black & white graphics with red as the highlight for selection.

Image quality is also very good. In a number of ‘every-day’ tests, we found the skin tones to be reproduced accurately and primary colours as they should be. The flash is quite strong and worthy of a mention. And in the same breath produces the perfect amount of flash at just 15cm from an object too – this is made easy with the ‘soft-flash’ option easily located in the on-screen menu.

The camera’s film speed settings range from a fine 50 to 400 ISO. Where its competition now reaches the 800 ISO mark you will find the quality delivered by these high mega-pixel cameras on small sensors just don’t deliver good quality images and are not much chop. So I believe Casio have done the right thing by omitting this setting and offering a finer 50 ISO setting to maintain the camera’s obvious high standards in all areas.

Overall the 7.2 mega-pixel EX-S770 was a pleasure to test drive and would be well worth the purchase.