Pro photographer Chris Coleman takes Casio's unique high-speed Pro camera out and about. Don't miss our in-depth Casio Exilim Pro EX-F1 review.
Review summary of the Casio Exilim Pro EX-F1:
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 There's simply nothing else like the Casio Exilim Pro EX-F1. No other prosumer camera has faster shutter-speeds, and no other prosumer camcorder has anything close to its ultra-high frame-rates. The camera's Achilles heel, though, is that its still-image quality is competitive only with point-and-shoots, and its slo-mo videos are so tiny and compressed they're barely YouTube quality. The Casio EX-F1 is an incredible, endlessly fun device, and it feels like an important first in digital-imaging. Still, unless you really need to shoot at 1,200 fps for a very specific purpose and you don't care about image quality, the Casio EX-F1 is ultimately a tough sell. That said, we eagerly await the Casio Exilim Pro EX-F2. Release: April 2008. Price: $1000.
Pros: Insane shutter speeds. Unheard-of slo-mo capabilities. Innovative bracketing and buffered shooting modes.
Cons: Still-image quality is disappointing. Slo-mo video quality is detrimental. Lacks a continuously variable zoom.
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Full review of the Casio Exilim Pro EX-F1:
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Design - Very good
Despite its fleshed-out camcorder functionality, the Casio Exilim Pro EX-F1 is clearly patterned after a typical DSLR. The body is nicely molded for two-handed use and features a deep grip down the front-right that's outfitted with comfortable, rubber padding. There's also a thumb rest on the back with bumps for extra friction, so the Exilim Pro EX-F1 is definitely not a camera that will slip out of your hands.
We particularly liked the rubberized ring-control on the lens, even though it's a bit misleading (more on that in the 'interface' section). There's a secondary zoom-control around the shutter, and focus and exposure shortcuts are available on the left side of the lens barrel. The 2.8-inch LCD screen is bright and detailed, though the viewfinder up top is electronic, with a pixilated image that only takes up 75% of the screen. We didn't expect a high-quality optical viewfinder, especially on a fixed-lens device, but a better display with a larger image would have been in the camera's favor.
Otherwise, the Casio EX-F1 is identical to a DSLR, with two major exceptions. In addition to the mode wheel, there's a continuous-shooting wheel that cycles the camera's various high-speed modes, and there's a switch on the back right that selects the video-recording modes. There's also a dedicated record button for shooting video, which makes alternating between camera and camcorder functionality a breeze. It's all a bit discombobulating at first - the sight of two wheels might itself send seasoned DSLR users into a tizzy - but with practice the mode wheel, CS wheel and video switch become intuitive.
Features - Excellent
The Casio Exilim Pro EX-F1 introduces so many new features to the consumer market, it's almost bewildering. The camera reconfigures continuous-shooting in fantastically useful ways, and its high-speed video functionality is revolutionary, at least for the mainstream digital community. As if that weren't enough, the camera also includes innovative buffered and bracketing modes to make it even more helpful in fast-motion scenarios.
The aperture ranges from f/2.7 - f/7.5 (wide) to f/4.6 - f/13.1 (tele), but the money-melon is the Casio EX-F1's shutter, which can go all the way down to a blistering 1/40,000-second, making it a good five-times faster than the quickest shutter we'd previously seen. This is one of several features that puts the Exilim Pro EX-F1 not just ahead of the pack, but outside it: no other prosumer camera is anywhere near as fast. Granted, the only subjects that would necessitate such a ridiculous speed are, say, a chemical reaction, and the sheer amount of light required for such shots nearly takes it back out of the realm of consumer feasibility. Still, even if it does long for a studio with high-powered lighting, the mere availability of a 1/40,000-second shutter is impressive enough.
The camera also has a plethora of continuous-shooting modes. Far more than the typical 2fps continuous or the run of the mill 3-burst mode, the Casio EX-F1 has five separate high-speed modes, the most basic of which can shoot up to an unheard-of 60 fps. Flash shooting, on the other hand, is limited to 7 fps, though that's still far in advance of other consumer cameras. There are also two buffered-modes, one that retains up to 60 images taken before the shutter is fully depressed, and another that plays back the buffer in slow motion, such that a user can press the shutter at precisely the right moment. Both accomplish the same thing, in that they take out the guesswork in taking fast-motion photographs.
Professionals, who've spent years learning to know in their bones when exactly to push the shutter, might not find these features quite so earthshaking, but the camera's bracketing features are more generally useful. Users can chose to bracket white balance, focus or exposure via a three or five-shot burst. Additionally, each mode is fully configurable, with up to a -2 to +2 differential for AE brackets, a 0.16 mm to infinity range for focus, and a warm to cool spread for white balances. Unfortunately, the bracketing modes don't really seem to take advantage of the Casio EX-F1's high-speed capabilities; despite testing it in a myriad of conditions, we couldn't get any of them to shoot faster than a couple frames per second. This would be an invaluable feature if it could bracket shots in fast-motion situations, but even as it stands, it's a nice boost to the camera's usability.
Finally, we get to the Exilim Pro EX-F1's camcorder capabilities, which really turn it into a whole new kind of digital-imaging beast. Firstly, the camera can record long-period video at full 1080 HD, which is affected by the ISO, shutter and f-stop settings under the manual mode, making the camera's videography more tweakable even than the prosumer Canon camcorder we use personally. But, most important of all, the Casio EX-F1 can record video at 300, 600 or even a piquing 1,200 fps. Until now, prosumer slow-motion could only be accomplished with some of Sony's higher-grade camcorders or by splicing 60i footage into a 24p stream, both of which only affect around a 25% reduction in perceived speed. 1,200 fps footage played back at 30 fps, contrarily, results in a 97.5% reduction in perceived speed. Users can even switch between 30 and 300 fps on the fly while recording, which can put extra emphasis on slow-motion action. Simply put, nothing even marginally similar has ever existed in the consumer or prosumer markets.
Again, it should be noted that the amount of light required to illuminate a 1,200 fps video can be intimidating, especially for indoor shoots, and the resolution of the high-speed modes is significantly lower than HD: 300 fps results in 512x384 video, 600 fps in 432x192, and 1,200fps in a rather lowly 336x96. All videos are multiplexed into a MOV file with AVC1 video and, in the case of standard-speed video, 44.1khz MS audio. Alas, none of the high-speed modes record audio, so those wishing to playback their voices at demonically low pitches are out of luck.
Interface - Good
The basic interface on the Casio EX-F1 is identical to other Exilim cameras. The four-way controller is used to scroll through shooting parameters, and more in-depth settings are accessible in the system menu. In manual mode, users can toggle between aperture and shutter settings with the 'set' button, which results in immediate access to everything from ISO to shutter to fps settings right off the viewfinder. The interdependent CS and mode wheels make for quick and easy configurations, and the switch on the back is clearly marked for high speed, high def and standard def modes.
Unfortunately, while zoom is variable in that the camera can zoom either slowly or quickly, it's not truly, continuously variable like a DSLR. This makes zooming as much of a clunky chore as any nominal point-and-shoot, and it renders even intermediate videography all but impossible, thus lessening the camera's HD capabilities. What's worse, the Casio EX-F1 actually has a zoom-ring on its lens, but appearances deceive, as it still only advances the zoom in piecemeal steps. At a $1,000 price point, it's almost unacceptable that the camera has the same zoom functionality as any years-old compact at one-tenth the price, and considering its bevy of other space-age features, it really does come off as a glaring oversight.
Image quality - Mediocre
Here the bubble bursts. For all its wondrous, slo-mo videos and precise, high-speed shutters, neither the video nor the photo quality on the Casio EX-F1 is particularly impressive. Six-megapixels is fine and 1080i is almost as good as prosumer camcorders get (1080p would've been nice, though), and it's a plus that Casio gave the camera a comparatively big, 1/1.8" imaging-sensor. Still, the proof is in the pudding, and in this case it's just not that sweet.
ISO-100 is largely clear, but noise is already noticeable by ISO-200, visible at sub-100% zoom in ISO-400, and distracting at ISO-800. ISO-1600 is an unusable sea of red speckling and massive color distortion. This is especially disappointing because, with only six megapixels spread across a relatively large sensor, the F1 should have excellent noise-management. Unfortunately, it's just not there: we've seen 10-megapixel cameras with 1/2.5" sensors giving less noise.
We would report on the camera's basic 1080i video quality, but, as much as we tried, we simply couldn't get any of the camera's full HD videos to playback on our office computers. Videos do play fine in-camera, and this very well could be an issue with the computer's hardware and not the Casio Exilim Pro EX-F1 (HD content in MOV files are notoriously finicky on older Windows machines). Later we plan to test the HD recordings on our personal, brand-new desktop computer, which can churn through most any media file thrown at it, at which point we'll post a new feature dedicated to the camera's HD quality.
300 fps video test
600 fps video test
1,200 fps video test
600 fps video test #2
These four samples are the Casio EX-F1 at 300, 600 and 1200 fps. The first three are of a manmade waterfall in Manhattan, and the effect is undeniably cool. On the other hand, the video quality itself is horrendous, and progressively so with each increase in frame rate. It's not just the low resolution of the videos: they also appear to be extremely compressed, with obvious macro-blocking to the point that almost all of the detail in the water is lost. The slo-mo mode seems to fare better with broader details and larger subjects, as the fourth sample isn't as thoroughly garbled as the splashing water particulates were (you'll need to fast-forward to get to the good part). Still, it is noticeably blocky and noisy, almost akin to a streamed video.
The quality of high-speed video on the Casio Exilim Pro EX-F1, even at 300 fps, simply isn't good enough to be cut into an SD workflow, much less an HD one. It's clearly useful for applications that don't require video-quality per se, such as scientific research or videoing your kid pitching at the big game, but otherwise its quality is so grainy, yet requires so much light, that it's reduced essentially to simple niftiness. Bluntly, the Casio EX-F1 is the greatest YouTube toy ever invented, but that seems like a grasped straw when it comes to justify its four-figure price.
Scene test
Scene test [Casio Exilim EX-Z80]
This is especially true considering the camera's still-image quality, which is roughly equivalent to a mid-range point-and-shoot. Obvious purple-fringing is visible down the right side of this scene test, the overall color gamut appears washed-out. The Casio Exilim Pro EX-F1 also seems to be pushing its reds, as the traffic cones and brake lights are unnaturally saturated. For comparison, the second sample is a scene test from Casio's own Exilim EX-Z80, a $180 point-and-shoot that delivers better color reproduction, less aberration and broader dynamic-range.
Macro test
Macro test [Casio Exilim EX-Z80]
The camera's macro feature performs better. Perhaps owing to its larger sensor, the Casio EX-F1 can manage a far shallower depth-of-field than any compact, and this sample has an appreciable background blur. Still, the color quality feels squinched and 'compact-esque,' and some chroma aberration is visible around the bright edge of the leaf. Again, Casio's EX-Z80 performed at least as well.
High-speed test
Of course, the Casio Exilim Pro EX-F1's raison d'etre is its fast shutters, and this sample demonstrates what can be captured with its high-speed flash mode at 7 fps. Granted, this could be accomplished with pretty much any camera (the shutter in this case was only at 1/200-second); it's just much more easily done with the Casio EX-F1's rapid fire modes. For what it is, image quality is good, but not anything that stands out.
Price and availability
The Casio Exilim Pro EX-F1 will start selling for $1000 () in April 2008.
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![Scene test [Casio Exilim EX-Z80]](http://www.infosyncworld.net/resources/products/casio/casio_exilim_zoom_ex-z80_s02.jpg){kind=link}
![Macro test [Casio Exilim EX-Z80]](http://www.infosyncworld.net/resources/products/casio/casio_exilim_zoom_ex-z80_s03.jpg){kind=link}
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