Casio Exilim EX-Z850

Editors' rating

Very good

7.6

out of 10

The good: Ultracompact size; manual focus and exposure adjustments; 35 scene modes; excellent movie capabilities; versatile burst modes.
The bad: Limited zoom range; some JPEG artifacts and fringing in photos.
The bottom line: With its broad feature set and tunable performance, the Casio Exilim EX-Z850 is well suited for snapshooters and photo enthusiasts looking an ultracompact camera.

Reviewed by:
David D. Busch
Review date: 4/24/06

Image quality of Casio Exilim EX-Z850

Design: 8 Features: 8 Performance: 7 Image quality: 7 The Casio Exilim EX-Z850 renders a variety of subjects quite well, especially highly detailed, contrasty images. However, JPEG artifacts often appear in uniform, low-contrast areas. Noise is OK at ISO 200 and less but begins to intrude at ISO 400. This camera offers a two-stop sensitivity boost to ISO 1,600 in the high-power flash mode and high-sensitivity scene modes, and noise is hard to ignore at that lofty setting. However, the extended flash range and reduced blur provided by high shutter speeds, coupled with the in-camera antishake feature, are worth the trade-off. The EX-Z850's vibration reduction feature delivers about a two-stop improvement.

Exposures are very good overall, but the brightest highlights are often washed out. Colors onscreen tend to look undersaturated, giving some hues that were vivid in the original scene a look that verged on the pastel, while prints are almost oversaturated. Skin tones suffer from the occasional cyan cast, but ineffective red-eye correction mars flash portraits. This camera's lens displays classic chromatic aberration problems, with both purple and green fringing.

Overall, however, the Casio Exilim EX-Z850's general photo quality is pleasing, and both snapshooters and enthusiasts should be satisfied with the photos from this camera.