Tiny camera, great looks and ease of use, AWESOME VIDEOS too
Pros:
Size. Ease of use. Video quality.
Cons:
Stainless steel body can be slippery.
The Bottom Line:
For ultimate portability and ease of use, look no further. And pictures are very good too.
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Overall Rating:
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Author's Review
For me, this Exilim EX-S600 was an unusual buy. I was not a starter-buyer: I normally use a large SLR and I wanted this as a camera which I would carry EVERYWHERE with me.
I chose Exilim because it was recommended by a professional photographer whom I respect because he, quite rightly, points out that it is a photographer, not a camera, who takes the pictures.
So I was not after comparative measurings of noise and resolution tests: I wanted a camera which would be very compact (uncompromisingly compact), reliable and simple to use. A better camera will not make better pictures: it will help YOU make your take your best picture with ease, convenience and speed.
Exilim did not disappoint on any of those counts. It is tiny. It is genuinely of a size of six credit cards put on top of each other. You gonna ask yourself - how do they make them? Open the battery compartment and remove the battery and the memory card (it uses a SD - I tested it up to 2 Gb from SanDisk and it works perfectly; even a "slow" card gives no trouble for either photos or videos [more on video later]). Now you realize that the battery and the card occupy about half of camera's interior. The other half is occupied by the lens assembly. There is no space for the mechanism itself. It is magic.
Ease of use? Definitely. I did not look into manual ONCE. It is all self-explanatory, even advanced settings. I cannot emphasize this enough. You will set and ready to go in five minutes.
The display is nice and sharp and bright enough to operate even in direct sunlight. Controls look and feel reliable, and the body (made of stainless steel and NOT painted plastic like some other cameras) has a feel of confidence and class.
The zoom is fast enough at least for my needs.
A real surprise came from the video facility. I did not buy it to shoot videos but now I am doing it all the time! You can shoot up to an hour's video (subject to card capacity), and you could swear the video was taken with a dedicated video camera worth at least $700. It is magic: super sharp, very smooth (high frame rate - none of the jerky picture business), it is extraordinary. Quite simply, it renders most cheaper handicams obsolete.
Charging is via charging only. There is editing/transfer software which I don't use: I have a $5 card reader and I transfer everything to my PC where I can use whatever tools I like.
