Digital Trends

Casio Exilim EX-S2

April 24th, 2003 | by Ian Bell

Setup and Use

There are two main setup elements to the Exilim EX-S2 camera. The first is the computer software side and the second is on the camera side. The Photo Loader program loads image data saved in JPEG and AVI format from your digital camera to your computer. The Photohands program is used for retouching and printing image files. Both programs work with Windows 98, Me, 2000, and XP operating systems as well as Macintosh's OS 7-8.5, 8.6,9, OSX operating systems. We tested our EX-S2 camera using Microsoft Windows XP. If you have an older operating system, the Photo Loader and Photohands program will be perfect for you, however with Windows XP we recommend using the native drivers and application support built into Windows XP as it is much more intuitive to use and installing a similar program is redundant. Windows XP recognized our EX-S2 as a removable hard drive when the camera was docked and viewing images was as easy as clicking on the drive in “my computer” and viewing the slide show.

On the camera side of things, the EX-S2 is one of the most intuitive camera's we have seen. The joystick is short enough that you do not have to worry about accidentally choosing a wrong option while using it. The TFT LCD display is absolutely stunning in all lighting conditions and the menu system is extremely easy to navigate in. Casio's award winning “Best Shot Mode” allows you to easily change picture settings in a couple small steps.

There are several options to choose from when taking a picture. You can choose the quality of the picture, picture size and whether you want the automatic or manual picture preferences. You can also decide whether or not to use the “white balancer” or not while taking pictures. We found the white balancer worked well in low lighting situations, but was not ideal for scenery pictures.

There are six different “best shot” preset image selections to use should you choose to:

• Portrait — Uses color enhancement to enhance flesh tones
• Scenery — Uses hard sharpness combined with high color saturation
• Retro — Uses low contrast and the sepia color filter
• Night Scene — Uses a low shutter speed and daylight white balance
• Twilight — Uses high color saturation and the magenta color filter
• Monochrome — Uses the monochrome filter

The Best Shot choices are great if you want quick presets for different lighting and surrounding conditions. The Best Shot option really makes the Exilim camera's a lot of fun and easy to use.

We found that image quality varied depending on the lighting conditions as they do with most cameras. Pictures taken with the EX-S2 tended to be a little washed out in most conditions. Portraits looked sharer and more color balanced over scenery pictures. You can click on the “performance” tab located above and below this review for sample pictures taken with the Casio EX-S2 camera.

We recommend purchasing an SD memory card right away. With 1600x1200 resolutions, the 12 MB of internal memory will go extremely fast. Battery life on the EX-S2 is relatively good considering the size of the battery. Turning off the LCD display should double your battery but be forewarned, there is no aiming guide in the view finder.

If you are an experienced photographer, the EX-S2 is not for you. There is no optical zoom and while there is a digital zoom, basically it is just blowing up the picture's size and a lot of pixilation occurs. We feel that any digital zoom whether it is in a digital camera or a camcorder is more of a marketing gimmick than a useful tool.

Recording video with the EX-S2 is fun and easy to do. Simply choose the microphone icon in the menu and record away. There is no reason why Casio should have taken the sound recording function out of recording video, the EX-S2 features 12 MB if internal memory while the other Exilim cameras feature 10 MB. The memory storage is there, add a microphone and reward the consumer with another extra feature. Firmware updates can be downloaded directly to the EX-S2 camera via the USB docking station and your personal computer allowing for the possibility for future features.

Conclusion

The Casio EX-S2 is an extremely fun camera to use. There are a lot of features for the size of the EX-S2 but for $279 dollars we would like to have seen optical zoom and sound recording capabilities. We also would have liked to have seen USB 2.0 support. With SD memory cards now reaching up to 1 GB in size, transferring that much data over USB 1.1 connection can get incredibly time consuming. The EX-S2 would have received an editor's choice award if it either had more features or a smaller price tag. Overall the EX-S2 is an extremely solid product and those looking for a slim digital camera in this price range should consider the EX-S2 a serious contender.