Casio S600 / Casio z750 / Fujifilm F11

[LiLS]

i cant choose between these?
anyone got opinions on these cameras?

i got about 350 bucks and ima get it around my birhtday, jan 9th

[VAtechtigger]

I dont know where you live, but from what I understand the F11 will not be available in the states, so you will have to order from oversees, and thus might not have warranty coverage here.

[slipe]

I would wait for some good reviews of the S600 before considering it. Casio has been putting their own lens with transparent ceramic technology on the S series and the image quality hasn't been at the top of the pack.

The Z750 has an excellent lens. It evidently isn't made by Casio and I don't know who makes it. I had read a couple months back that they are improving the lens so it doesn't develop lens errors if it accidentally extends in a tight space. If they have corrected that, it doesn't have any real drawbacks. I have one and like it except for having to carry it in audio record mode to keep the lens from accidentally extending at the wrong time and causing a lens error. I like the small optical finder fine, but I don't think it would work very well for someone who wears eyeglasses for distant vision. It doesn't have a diopter correction and you have to get your eye pretty close to see the full view.

The F11 looks to be a great camera also if you can get one. The movies take a lot of space without MPEG4 and it doesn't have the great past movie mode, but the high ISO capabilities make it desirable. I would guess it has the same great lens as the F10. The increased the resolution of the LCD but I don't know how well it will work in bright sunlight.

[andygold]

I had the 750 for about 4 months and finally returned it (Costco is a wonderful place to purchase from). After many months of searching and reading reviews, it was the only camera to have. Now after 4 months, I've had to return it. All the features and bells and whistles were great. So was the ease of use and the easily traveled menus. The movie modes produced excellent results, in my opinion.



I only had the "lens error" once, and that was due to the lens hitting my finger as it opened. The reason for the return was totally due to picture quality. Although "most" of my outdoor shots were of great quality, half of my indoor shots were not. A good half of my shots were either improperly exposed or blurry. It made no difference whether I was in auto mode or shooting in scene modes or even shooting with manual settings. One thing I found was that the camera always wanted to shoot between 1/5 of a second and 1/60 of a second. Great shutter speedsif you wantblurry pictures. It made no difference whether the flash was on or off. Distance to the subject made no difference either (I know the flash is not that powerful). I tried upping the power to the flash, and also playing with every setting I could tweak to get a decent picture. Playing with white balance, and exposure compensation (using the histogram) although it helped, it did not solve the problem. Even in brighly lit rooms, the pictures were either blurry or wierdly colored (played with white balance and everything else to no avail). It was very good that the camera allows you to instantly see what you just shot, as 1/2 the time, I had to retake the picture. Sometimes no amount of reshooting could get a decent pic.

I believe that if the picture quality is not there, then all the extras are not worth it, hence my returning this camera. I'm not discounting the possibility that there might havebeen some sort of problem specific to my particular camera.

As an aside, I am truly dismayed, as I believed this to be the best camera (in it's class) at least for me at that time. Now I need to start the whole research process over!!

[slipe]

andygold wrote:

I only had the "lens error" once, and that was due to the lens hitting my finger as it opened. The reason for the return was totally due to picture quality. Although "most" of my outdoor shots were of great quality, half of my indoor shots were not. A good half of my shots were either improperly exposed or blurry. It made no difference whether I was in auto mode or shooting in scene modes or even shooting with manual settings. One thing I found was that the camera always wanted to shoot between 1/5 of a second and 1/60 of a second. Great shutter speedsif you wantblurry pictures. It made no difference whether the flash was on or off. Distance to the subject made no difference either (I know the flash is not that powerful). I tried upping the power to the flash, and also playing with every setting I could tweak to get a decent picture. Playing with white balance, and exposure compensation (using the histogram) although it helped, it did not solve the problem. Even in brighly lit rooms, the pictures were either blurry or wierdly colored (played with white balance and everything else to no avail). It was very good that the camera allows you to instantly see what you just shot, as 1/2 the time, I had to retake the picture. Sometimes no amount of reshooting could get a decent pic.

You can go through almost every camera specific forum on the board and find a similar post. What appears to be normal lighting to your eye isn't necessarily enough to take a picture. If the camera is choosing 1/5 second I can guarantee the lens is wide open and that is all it can generate to properly expose the photo. There is no magic setting or tweak that will give you more than 1/5 second and a proper exposure except cranking up the ISO. The camera is f2.8 at wide to around f5 at telephoto, which is pretty standard for pocket cameras. I don't know of a pocket camera that has a faster lens or that will give you more than 1/5 second under the same conditions and ISO setting.

Not having enough light for a shot plays havoc with the white balance on any camera.

Flash sync speed is always 1/60 second in snapshot or any scene mode. The camera is counting on the flash strobe being in the thousandths of a second to freeze the action. Most consumer digital cameras flash sync at 1/60 second except for some Sony cameras that sync at 1/45. Sony seems to think it gives better backgrounds but some people complain of ghosts in brightly lit situations. It is a tradeoff and both approaches have merit.

You might be happy with a Fuji F10. It does better than most cameras at high ISO, although there is additional noise compared to shooting at lower ISO. I think the camera automatically goes to ISO400 for flash, which extends the flash range nicely. For a large print you would probably want to manually reduce that if possible.

The flash is a little odd on the Z750. If it sees bright lights in the scene it seems to switch to a fill-flash mode where it throttles down the flash. Spot metering combined with boosting the flash seems to overcome that. I have a custom scene mode for that. Flash assist works well unless you are making a giant print where the extra noise would show. But the bright indoor lights seem to turn that down as well. Again you have to switch to spot metering so the camera doesn't see lights. I don't normally use flash assist since Shadow/Highlight in Photoshop seems to do the same thing and you have more control.

I've already posted this on another thread, but since you are new to the forum you aren't tired of it yet. I measured 25 feet from the face of the fireplace for this shot with flash assist and spot metering. The dark wall is another 2 feet. The left light is off and the right one has only a 16 watt bulb, so it isn't really contributing to the shot. I have another shot from 15 feet with the flash assist off that has a pretty good exposure as well. Casio should do a firmware update to change the way it responds to light in the scene, but you can do pretty well with spot metering. I rarely get a less than perfect shot with the camera BTW.