The Casio EX-Z80 is a great looking, compact point-and-shoot. Did the pictures it took look as good as the camera itself?
Review summary of the Casio Exilim Zoom EX-Z80:
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 There’s no denying how stylish Casio’s EX-Z80 looks, nor how capably it handles, but our presumptions of subpar image-quality were quickly checked by this camera’s excellent images. Though probably not the best point-and-shoot to take into low-light situations, in proper conditions the EX-Z80 delivers quality photos via a series of genuinely helpful features. Release: March 2008. Price: $180.
Pros: Looks great, feels great, great photos, fast continuous shooting, auto-shutter modes, YouTube integration
Cons: High ISO modes are disproportionately noisy, ‘Best Shot’ feature is overblown, standalone audio-recorder is gimmicky, ‘pointillistic’ quality to color reproduction
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73%
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Full review of the Casio Exilim Zoom EX-Z80:
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Design - Excellent
Perhaps the EX-Z80 strongest feature is its styling: slim, sleek, and sporting a thoughtful application of color and design, it’s simply a great looking camera. The EX-Z80 moreover feels great, in that its weight and size are perfectly proportioned and its smoothed surfaces afford it a professionalism far removed from the dinky plastics of a typical point-and-shoot.
The buttons are reduced to a minimum while maintaining easy functionality: on top is the small power button and a typical shutter release (itself ensconced in an invariable zoom), and on the back are the rest of the controls, including a four-way selector that makes menu-navigation relatively breezy. The back also contains a large LCD viewfinder, which has been expanded to fill as much space as possible. Thankfully, Casio has elected not to bother with a pinhole viewfinder, a solid decision, and we hope other manufacturers will follow suit.
Features - Very good
The only major absence in the EX-Z80’s feature-set is its lack of manual control; while the camera does allow one to select a specific ISO and focus manually, there’s no way to override the shutter and aperture settings. Frankly, manual-mode is not too sorely missed, as the camera automatically selected appropriate settings in all of our tests, if tending towards high shutters and wide apertures.
In addition to its full-automatic mode, the EX-Z80 also features an enormous array of scene-modes via a feature entitled ‘Best Shot’ (which Casio has, perhaps unfortunately, labeled as ‘BS’ on the appropriate button); there are 26 total, encompassing everything from portraits to ‘fashion accessories’ to food and even two ‘self-portrait’ modes, which should prove a big hit at libational sorority parties. Many of these scenes seemed bewilderingly specific, and we couldn’t help but wonder if some were included solely to make ‘Best Shot’ seem more useful, as the simple auto-mode sufficed in every situation we tested. Still, some settings are intrinsically worthwhile, such as an ‘eBay’ mode for product shots.
Otherwise the EX-Z80 has an assortment of useful features, our favorite being its rapid-fire continuous modes. The fastest shoots upwards of two photos per second for as long as the shutter is depressed, and the flash-mode delivers four back-to-back shots each lit by an independent flash. There are also several auto-shutter modes. The simplest mode automatically fires the shutter when both the subject and the camera are still, and the most complex is a ‘familial’ smile-detection mode that purportedly weights itself towards faces the camera has photographed before. The simple auto-shutter mode was great for reducing camera-shake, and the unweighted smile-detection worked as advertised (sometimes too late, however, rendering a picture of a post-smile countenance), whereas the ‘family detector’ feature had us skeptical.
The EX-Z80 also includes a full assortment of focus modes, including automatic, pan, infinite, manual, and macro. Pan focus is particularly useful for videography, as it tends to keep moving objects and pans in better overall focus (instead of the amateurish, ‘racked focusing’ that results from automatic modes), and Casio has helpfully included a zoom-focus feature to the manual mode to assist in fine-tunings. The macro setting works as it should, though it tends to lose focus within six inches of the subject; we’ve seen other point-and-shoots that could get a little closer.
To ease usability, Casio has also included a full range of output resolutions in a variety of aspect ratios, each of which is appropriately labeled with both the resolution and the screen format. Finally, and of somewhat dubious import, the EX-Z80 also features a standalone audio-recording mode (in addition to its video capabilities), but the quality is terrible: recordings are encoded in monaural 11 khz / 4 bit wav files, making them 4.2% the quality of CDs. Maybe a microphonic camera is useful for covert operations, but if you aren’t a spy, then you probably won’t find much point in this feature.
Interface / Bundle - Very good
On the downside, the EX-Z80 doesn’t include any media, which isn’t altogether unexpected, but nonetheless would be nice to see bundled with a point-and-shoot. On the upside, the camera is powered by a Li-Ion battery, something so very preferable to bothering with AA batteries. The interface on the camera itself is efficient and quickly navigable, though it’s easy to get lost in the sea of Best Shot scene-modes.
The bundled software is similarly intuitive, and Casio has created a major selling-point by including software that allows users to directly upload their videos to YouTube without even opening a web browser. Coupled with the camera’s no-fuss YouTube video-preset, uploading content to YouTube from the EX-Z80 is about as simple as it gets.
Image Quality - Very good
Given the EX-Z80’s emphases on aesthetics and YouTube functionality, we weren’t expecting too much from its actual image quality; imagine our surprise when we discovered that, as far as point-and-shoots go, this camera can take excellent pictures, thanks no doubt to its remarkably low ISO-64 setting. Granted, at the higher ISO settings, quality suffers: noise is already evident at 200, distracting at 400, and ISO-1600 is, as usual, essentially unusable. There’s also some speckling to the color reproduction that, especially in low light, can smear fine-details.
Halo test
But in good light at ISO-64, the camera’s photos are pristine. In this sample, absolutely no halos are evident, and only the barest hint of purple fringing can be seen along some of the branches. The swaths of blue in the sky are also rendered fairly well, with only a hint of digitization and noise.
Fringing / edge test
This second test for fringing is, all considering, a phenomenal photo for a point-and-shoot. No fringing is apparent, all of the hard edges are rendered cleanly and distinctly, and colors are vivid. At full size some of the aforementioned speckling is noticeable, but otherwise this is great image-quality.
Scene test
The camera also does well with general ‘scenes,’ with no obvious subject or focal point; this sample demonstrates sharp lines and well-defined color. The only negative aspect is the visible distortion in darker areas of the image.
Macro test
Here we have a macro test, and the EX-Z80 delivered a superb shot: the subject is sharply focused and finely detailed, and the background is suitably defocused and softened. Again, only some evident noise in the darker areas of the background relegates this from perfection.
Flash test
Finally we tested the flash and found it too worked quite well: the subject is well-lit and detailed without appearing ‘blown out’ or over-sharpened. Also, in what has become a trend, the only real imperfection is the noisiness in the darker sections of the background.
In terms of video, the EX-Z80 records at either 640x480 or 320x240 at 30fps, and it encodes into an h.264 stream in a MOV header. Surprisingly, the audio quality in video-mode is actually better than the quality in the standalone audio-mode, as it records at 44 khz / 16 bit, albeit compressed into an AAC stream. As for image quality, the EX-Z80’s videos are beyond suitable for YouTube, though, as always, people honestly interested in videography are well-advised to just get a camcorder.
Price and availability
The Casio Exilim Zoom EX-Z80 is currently available for $200.
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