Casio Exilim EX-FH100 review

There’s no shortage of compact ultra-zoom cameras available, and if the price of this model puts you off it’s worth looking at the cheaper Casio EX-H5.

The Casio FH100’s 10x zoom lens is relatively modest but, at £225, this is no budget model. Fortunately, it has other tricks up its sleeve. Its fast CMOS sensor can capture 30 frames at up to 40fps. The camera took 20 seconds to save the pictures to memory card before it could repeat the trick, but even so, rivals cameras can’t hope to match this kind of performance. The fast sensor is also used to capture slow-motion video. Options vary from VGA capture at 120fps, playing back at 30fps for 1/4-speed slow motion, right up to 1,000fps capture, though only at a tiny 224×56 pixels.

Normal-speed video is in 720p HD, and looked sumptuously clean and detailed. The stereo soundtrack was rich and full-bodied, but it’s disappointing that the zoom and autofocus were fixed for the duration of clips.

Otherwise, this is an extremely capable compact camera. There’s a spacious 3in LCD, a mode dial with priority and manual exposure modes and an HDMI output. It can even capture in RAW mode, but strangely, only at ISO 100 or 200 and not at higher ISO speeds where it would be arguably more useful. The menu system could be friendlier, but the dedicated video-capture and continuous-shooting buttons are welcome.

Still image quality was as good as we’ve seen from a compact ultra-zoom camera. Details in brightly lit shots were impressively crisp throughout the zoom range, with balanced colours and barely any hint of noise. Quality was only passable at ISO 1600, but it still maintained a slight advantage over its direct competitors. Frustratingly, though, automatic settings refused to venture beyond ISO 400, so we had to intervene to avoid camera shake in dim lighting.

The FH100 isn’t cheap, but those who are tempted by its high-speed photography and video features won’t be disappointed.