Casio astounds us with images from its new ultra high speed Exilim F1, which breaks speed records recording high-res video and still images.
Editor's note: Click here to read our in-depth review of the Casio Exilim Pro EX-F1.
Casio has all but invented a new category in the Exilim Pro EX-F1 camera. To say that the camera is the world's fastest digital burst camera is a serious understatement. While a standard DSLR might capture 4-5 frames per second at best, the F1 manages a jaw-dropping 60fps at 6-megapixels. We got our hands on the new camera at CES in Las Vegas, and the performance was truly impressive. The shutter release sounds more like a machine gun or a whirring fan than a camera shutter. And the speedy goodness doesn't end there.
The Casio Exilim Pro EX-F1 can record video at an astounding 1200fps. You read that correctly. At that speed, you can watch the latex slowly peel back from a water balloon as it explodes. You can see the cork twirl across a room as it leaves a bottle of champagne. The speeds are nearly scientific, but the results are impressive. Like, National Geographic impressive. The quality of the video at the highest speeds clearly took a hit, but the details that it managed to capture were literally invisible at slower speeds.
The F1 also features a memory buffer that starts recording video and still images when you depress the shutter release half way. So, you can line up your shot, but if you press the shutter too late and miss the crucial moment, the camera will probably have it in memory.
Amazingly, we also saw the flash keep up with the hyper-fast burst speeds. We can't be sure exactly how quickly it fired, but we would say we saw at least 20 flashes before we stopped the one second burst.
At $1000, the Casio EX-F1 will be a pricey addition to a camera collection, and it certainly serves a specialized purpose, though that isn't to say that the average shutterbug wouldn't benefit from some serious burst power. We can imagine plenty of uses for the camera ourselves, and any parent will appreciate a sensor that can keep up with the, er, spontaneity of their children. So, for some this could be a primary camera, though it is quite large, and probably won't satisfy customers looking for something pocketable.
The camera offers some assistance with picture selection, but we also worry about cluttering our image folders with 60 frame bursts. Unless you really need to capture the split-second moment, perhaps a slower burst would do, and for this Casio lets you adjust burst speed by twisting the lens ring.
We can imagine a new category for high-speed cameras, and a frames-per-second war ensuing, but mostly, we see the EX-F1 as a demonstration of features that will eventually trickle their way down. Perhaps our point-and-shoot cameras won't have 1200fps video recording, but maybe 300fps would offer some cool capabilities. And certainly we can do better than 3.5fps on our DSLR.
Philip Berne, Matthew Ruiz, Edward Distel and Sindre Lia contribute to the CES 2008 coverage.
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