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Casio Exilim PRO EX-P600

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By Calvin Siew
Apr 14, 2004

This sleek 6-megapixel shooter is the first model to don Casio's PRO tag. While the firm's previous Exilims were all up-market products, the EX-P600 appears to up the ante with regard to performance and features. Sporting a 4x Canon glass along with plenty of functions catering to advanced shutterbugs, the EX-P600 seems to represent the company's coming of age in the digicam industry.

Eggs Included?
With Easter just passed, we were surprised to find out that the EX-P600 has a little egg left in by Casio. One of our readers informed us that through a combination of button presses, users are able to access a hidden menu to change various settings, one of which happens to address our initial grumbles about the exclusion of RAW file support.

Officially, the EX-P600 supports only TIFF (uncompressed) and JPEG image formats in three compression settings. The resulting 6-megapixel TIFF images are on average about 14MB in size while unofficial RAW files come in substantially less at 9MB. The large savings in storage space will allow users to take about 30 percent more images. We hope Casio will be able to release an updated firmware to add RAW file support into its official menu system soon.

Unconventional Exilim Looks
Although the EX-P600 is also branded an Exilim, it's a fair bit off the characteristic slimness. Still, this Casio retains the brushed metallic styling as well as the solid feel of its slender siblings. Most of the increase in size can be attributed to the 4x Canon lens incorporated into the EX-P600. However, this setback is quickly offset by the camera's ability to use Canon and Casio add-on lens converters.

Despite the generous 2-inch LCD on the small form factor, the buttons and dials are well-placed and logical. In terms of menu layout, navigation of the menus proved mostly coherent and simple. However, we'd like to caution users in playback mode that it's fairly easy to delete all your pictures on this Exilim.

Features Galore
While its earlier Exilim brethrens were primarily point-and-shoots, the EX-P600 boasts a neat choice of manual shooting options and a novel information display. Although some users may find the amount of information a little overbearing, the more accomplished photographers will no doubt appreciate them. Best described as a cross between a racing game and a first person shooter (FPS), the overlay presents photographic information such as shutter speed, aperture, and focusing. There's also a real-time histogram thrown in.

Storage-wise, the EX-P600 comes with approximately 9MB of internal memory with support for Secure Digital (SD) cards. Unfortunately, the retail package does not include any external flash storage; hence, users will need to factor in the additional cost of such storage solutions if they intend to use that 6-megapixel sensor to its fullest potential.

While the EX-P600 does not feature a hotshoe, the camera does have a Sync terminal for use with other commercially available external flash equipment. The drawback of such an arrangement is that you'll need to purchase an additional bracket to attach such equipment to the camera, resulting in more accessories to lug around.

Other notable mentions include lengthy video captures with audio that's limited by memory and PictBridge compatibility.

Performance
In our tests, we found the EX-P600's performance to be generally good. While it started up slower than some of the previous Exilims, it still powered up at a pretty decent pace of 2 seconds. In terms of continuous capture, the EX-P600 recorded JPEG images at a rate of 3fps for up to six shots.

The zoom mechanism was reasonably quiet and had enough steps for most users--although we'd have preferred it to be smoother. The autofocusing (AF) system was also quite peppy, often taking less than a second for situations with adequate lighting. Under low ambient lighting, the timings were also good, coming in at 2 to 3 seconds.

In terms of image quality, the EX-P600 delivered mostly detailed and sharp photos. The colors captured appeared natural, too. Metering was also generally good and our pictures turned up well-exposed. Although this Casio uses a 4x Canon lens, we did notice vignetting in the camera's widest angle of view. We're unable to pin this down to the lens quality or the pairing between the lens and Casio's sensor. We'd hazard that it's due to the latter as we did not notice such issues on Canon's 4x PowerShot G5.

The automatic white balance performance was iffy and needed touch-ups on certain occasions. ISO noise was also prevalent at sensitivity settings above 200, which limited the usable selections to just ISO 50, 100 and 200.

The Verdict
With a sticker price of S$0 (US$0), the EX-P600 falls right into the same market as Sony's ultraslim DSC-T1. In all, we liked how this Exilim handled. It is fast and easy to adapt. In terms of functionality and image quality, we also preferred it over the Sony. However, even though this Casio has its perks, we still find it a tad too expensive.