Casio EXILIM EX-FS10 Review by Jenafer Roy

With the invention of the digital camera whole new worlds opened up for my husband and me. Jeff bought our first digital camera and was so excited. Frankly, so was I. The thought of being able to almost instantly print out pictures, not having to spend money on printing out the ones that hadn’t turned out right, was almost intoxicating. And that was when the dilemma started. Jeff had always preferred to have a camera that was as advanced as we could afford. I had no problem with this in theory, but in reality, it translated into a bigger, bulkier camera then I felt comfortable with, a dSLR. I found myself not using our camera as often as I had previously, then the Casio Exilm ex-fs10 came into my life.

This camera included everything I wanted, with the added benefit of also not making my husband want to pull all his hair out. So, I’ll go through the expectations. It’s small. This is important to me. I need to be able to drop it into my purse and go. Often, I will just leave it in my purse so that when I showed up at my daughter’s student of the week assembly after spending several hours grocery shopping and running other errands, I could still snap pictures of her beaming from the stage as they handed her a computer generated certificate and unsharpened pencil. In the past, I have forgotten to bring a camera with me so these moments weren’t being recorded. The Exilm also has a large view screen. I can easily see exactly what my picture looks like. The only problem is that it’s too fast in saving to the memory card. I don’t have enough time to delete before it saves but that’s only a small nuisance. Another of the features that I really enjoy is the ease of use. I can fill my 4 gig card at family events, come home, pop the card into my computer and download the pictures in no time at all. For those of you without a card slot on your PC, it does come with a cord for equally easy downloading. I even used the video function at my daughter’s preschool Halloween parade. The video wasn’t smooth and seamless, in fact it was a bit choppy and disjointed, but it did capture the event for posterity. And I figured out the video for the next time, so I now have my daughters twirling and singing seamlessly. It’s even got a cord so that you can pop the video up on the TV almost instantly for all to see and hear.

As for its other very wonderful features, this camera captures at 9.1 megapixels and has a 3X optical zoom. It’s fully compatible with all our computers (and we have 5 in the house!) and even has a built in flash. It’s very easy to use, omitting the viewfinder in favor of the larger viewing screen and has a built in timer and everything. If I felt so inclined I could even have attached it to our tripod.

I did have one initial complaint. It’s really the only thing I could find wrong with this camera. I was trying to capture a picture of my six year old swinging I my mother’s backyard and noticed that I would snap the picture and it wouldn’t actually capture the image for a second or so. Then my husband pointed out burst mode. This is when you push the button and it takes thirty or so very quick pictures in a two or three second span. Not all of the pictures are keepers, but you can usually find at least one that is good. I used this feature when capturing my five kids with Santa. Between the eight year old putting up rabbit ears, the four year olds fidgeting, and the thirteen year old eye rolling, I credit this camera for the successful happy picture. If I squint just right, I can even pretend that my kids are the angels they appear in that shot!
I truly love my new little toy and highly recommend it to anyone who is looking for one. For around $199, it’s a great buy.

For more info and complete specs, check out Casio’s website at http://www.casio.com/products/Cameras/EXILIM_High-Speed/EX-FS10BE/content/Technical_Specs/