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Casio Exilim Zoom EX-Z1000Casio's 10-megapixel shooter sports a huge display and lots of useful features. Price:
$399
by Anthony Losanno 
Apparently, no one told Casio that the megapixel race was over. The Exilim Zoom EX-Z1000 packs a whopping ten megapixels of resolution, an antishake DSP, lots of manual options, and 37 Best Shot scene modes into a camera no bigger than a deck of cards (3.6 x 2.3 x 0.9 inches).
The EX-Z1000 feels solid, with a sturdy, all-metal 4.9-ounce body. A large 2.8-inch LCD fills most of the back, along with tiny buttons for switching among still camera settings, movie recording, Best Shot modes, and controls to tweak the display. Battery life isn’t an issue—the EX-Z1000 takes a rated 360 shots per charge—but like other Casio models that we’ve tested, you need to take the docking cradle along on vacation or buy an external travel charger to recharge the camera. With 37 Best Shot scene modes, you can choose from traditional options like Portrait, Scenery, and Sports, or very specific modes like Autumn Leaves, Food, and Sundown. Using the Illustration setting, you take a picture and the EX-Z1000 automatically converts it into a comic book like drawing (not particularly useful, but cool nonetheless). Like the EX-Z850, this digicam includes the eBay Best Shot mode, which employs a special macro setting for close-ups and then automatically resizes photos before you upload them onto the online merchant’s Web site. With a quick boot-up time, the EX-Z1000 was ready to take our first pic within two seconds; the time between shots was also speedy (a lightning-fast shutter lag of only 0.002 seconds). Most of the snaps we took looked good with accurate colors and decent saturation. However, we wish that Casio included a zoom bigger than 3X. When we pushed the zoom to close in on buildings across the Hudson River, photos became grainy and significantly blurred. One of the real benefits of shooting 10-MP photos is the ability to make large prints that are suitable for framing. When we snapped a shot of several Manhattan buildings with the EX-Z1000 and a 4-MP digicam, the difference was clear. The EX-Z1000 didn’t lose any of the details, including some of the brickwork of the buildings, while the 4-MP model’s shot looked relatively blurry. Images captured at the maximum resolution take up a lot of space on the memory card (up to 4.2MB each), which means you can store only two 10-MP shots out of the box. We recommend springing for a 1GB card if you want to keep shooting without having to unload frequently. Like many cameras, the Casio EX-Z1000 captures video as well. It records VGA clips (640 x 480 pixels) at 25 fps. Our footage was crisp (even when shooting at night) with few artifacts, but it looked a little distorted when we shot in bright sunlight at a pool. The Casio EX-Z1000 takes great photos, which is what matters most. It has more scene modes and a higher resolution than you’ll ever need, but you won’t find a more feature-packed point-and-shoot camera under $400. Compare Prices | Casio Exilim Zoom EX-Z1000 Specifications
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