To help us provide you with free impartial advice, we may earn a commission if you buy through links on our site. Learn more

Casio Exilim EX-H15 review

Our Rating :
Price when reviewed : £199
inc VAT

Casio’s Exilim EX-H15 is a practical compact travel zoom camera thanks to its impressive battery life and good picture quality.

Specifications

1/2.3in 14.1-megapixel sensor, 10.0x zoom (24-240mm equivalent), 206g

http://www.lambda-tek.com/
[/vc_column_text][/vc_column][/vc_row]

Video is recorded at 720p at 30fps in the Motion JPEG format at a bit rate of 30Mbps, but quality isn’t that great. It struggles a bit with panning and it’s quite noisy, but it’s passable. The soundtrack is recorded by a single mono microphone at a bit rate of 177kbps, which again isn’t going to win any awards, but it’s good enough for its intended use. Both focusing and zoom controls are disabled, which is probably for the better as they’re both quite noisy in operation.

Operational speed was very impressive for a camera of this class, turning on in under two seconds. Shot-to-shot time was about a second in the standard auto mode, but increased to a few seconds when using one of the scene modes, art filters or the Premium Auto mode as there’s some extra processing after the shot has been recorded. We can’t heap quite as much praise on the HS mode though, as it’s a bit of a gimmick. It records at either 10fps at 1,280×960 or 4fps at 1,600×1,200, but picture quality is quite poor with an overall soft feel and a lack of detail.

Given the extreme focal range, Casio has been wise to kit the EX-H15 out with image stabilisation of the sensor-shift variety, which moves the sensor to compensate for vibrations that become more of a problem at longer focal lengths. We found it worked quite well, but even in good lighting conditions there were still shots that suffered from camera shake.

Casio Exilim EX-H15 (top)

Otherwise, the EX-H15 produces bright and well-saturated photos in good light, but there’s a loss of sharpness in the corners at the two extreme ends of the H15’s focal range. At wider angles barrel distortion is also quite extreme, giving you something else to consider, but photos taken between about 40mm and 200mm (equivalent) don’t exhibit many problems. Sharpness across the frame isn’t bad, although we found that the bottom left hand corner was a little softer than the rest of the frame at all focal lengths.

We also saw all the typical characteristics of a 14 megapixel 1/2.3in CCD sensor, meaning pixel fringing was visible at 100 per cent zoom and low light performance is not surprisingly a weak point. Despite this, Casio has done a reasonable job with its noise reduction algorithm and the EX-H15 produces acceptable images at up to ISO 400, with detail and sharpness starting to suffer at ISO 800. Shots at ISO 1600 border on unusable as resolution loss caused by noise reduction is quite harsh – at ISO 3200, edge definition is almost completely lost and there’s not only colour shifting, but also a lot of banding.

Despite these quibbles, there’s a lot to like about the EX-H15’s practicality and it serves its purpose well. Both still and motion picture quality is quite good, and the lens isn’t bad either – you can take pretty good photos with the minimum of fuss. What makes the EX-H15 stand out though is the very long battery life which makes it the perfect camera for taking on holiday if you’re travelling light. It’s similarly priced against its competitors and may not be quite as attractive as the TZ10 or WB650, which both have a built-in GPS unit, but it’s otherwise a very capable camera.

Pages: 1 2

Basic Specifications

Rating ****
CCD effective megapixels 14.1 megapixels
CCD size 1/2.3in
Viewfinder none
Viewfinder magnification, coverage N/A
LCD screen size 3.0in
LCD screen resolution 460,800 pixels
Articulated screen No
Live view Yes
Optical zoom 10.0x
Zoom 35mm equivalent 24-240mm
Image stabilisation optical, sensor shift
Maximum image resolution 4320×3240
Maximum movie resolution 1280×720
Movie frame rate at max quality 30fps
File formats JPEG, AVI (Motion JPEG), WAV (audio/voice recording)

Physical

Memory slot SDHC
Mermory supplied 73.8MB internal
Battery type 3.7V 1,950mAh Li-ion
Battery Life (tested) 1,000 shots
Connectivity USB 2.0 Hi-Speed
Body material plastic
Lens mount N/A
Focal length multiplier N/A
Kit lens model name N/A
Accessories USB and AV cables
Weight 206g
Size 62x103x29mm

Buying Information

Warranty 1 year parts and labour
Price £199
Supplier http://www.lambda-tek.com/
Details www.casio.co.uk

Camera Controls

Exposure modes auto, premium auto, 42 scene modes
Shutter speed 4 to 1/2000
Aperture range f/3.2 to f/7.5
ISO range (at full resolution) 64 to 3200
Exposure compensation +/- 2EV
White balance auto, 6 presets, manual
Additional image controls make up mode, vivid landscape, mist removal
Manual focus Yes
Closest macro focus 7cm
Auto-focus modes multi, intelligent, spot, tracking
Metering modes multi-pattern, centre-weighted, centre
Flash auto, forced, soft flash, red-eye reduction
Drive modes single, continuous, high-speed burst (10fps/4fps), flash burst (3fps), self-timer

Read more

Reviews