Casio Exilim EX-FC100 9MP Digital Camera (Black) Review

I have a 4 year old Casio EX-Z750 that I love, so I know something about what a great camera Casio can make.This one fell short for me because of one simple reason.Auto Focus does not work during Standard or HD movies.A bigger problem is that you can't even get focused and then start videoing because it has something called "Fixed Focal Length". This is technical jargon for "We were too lazy to do the focus right."My 4 year old Casio EX-Z750 auto focuses during video.The videos that the old camera takes are awesome.The videos this one takes are all blurry because of the focus issue.Hopefully Casio will get their act together and put together a firmware to fix this.I have contacted support and let them know about my discontent with this and if others do as well, I think it can be addressed.Like I said, their camera could do it 4 years ago.

Beyond my HUGE complaint.The high speed video is awesome.It takes great pictures and video of action.They got the part that most people are buying this camera for right.The problem is I bought it to also take awesome regular speed HD videos.I purchased a 16 GB card for it since I knew that it would eat a lot of space to do these videos.The problem here is that the camera will only take videos up to 4 GB in size.This means 18 minutes.54 minutes in standard.Yes I can have 4 4 GB files on one card, but if I am going to video a performance of something I don't want to have to hit start and stop every 18 minutes.This isn't a deal killer like the lack of focus, but it's annoying.You cannot change the detail level to something like EP, LP, SP like with a video camera.Just 18 minutes or 54.The camera records video in MJPEG.This means huge file sizes.My macbook pro easily opens the files and visual hub quickly converts them to smaller MP4 files without loosing much quality.I wish the camera recorded in h.264, but it's okay that it doesn't for this price.

It's nice having a dedicated video button, but they put it in the wrong spot.I am constantly hitting the camera button next to the play button to start videos.I am sure I will adjust over time, but that's where the button should have been.Another thing I miss is that my Z750 allowed me to choose to have the right and left selects switch between white balance. It's still easy to change, I just miss that ability.The white balance on auto works well and the manual white balance fixes when it doesn't.

The camera mechanicals are a lot slower than my Z750.The Z750 blasts the lens out of the body in what seems like an instant and is ready to start taking shots.The FC100 takes a couple seconds longer in turning on and off.

This is not a bad camera for the price, but Casio had a chance to make an awesome camera for the price.Hopefully they will get their act together and fix the focus issue.If they do, this is a 5 star camera for me.Til then it is only 3 star.



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Digital Camera Labels: Casio Exilim EX-FC100 9MP Digital Camera with 5x Optical Image Stabilized Zoom and 2.7 inch LCD (Black),CASIO,FC100 Black