R.I.P. Casio Exilim

So I’m smack in the middle of moving cross-country, packing up all our stuff to load on a truck, never to be seen again which will arrive in a few days at our new home. Time to take pictures of everything for reference and to compare potential damage.

Naturally this is the perfect time for my camera to die… Especially since *two days previously* I’d sold our barely-used spare camera on EBay.

Well, I guess I’ve got a new camera fund from the proceeds. :D

The old girl had served me well for two and a half years, through Los Angeles, Frankfurt, Berlin, Boston, Copenhagen, Stockholm, Tampa, Taipei and San Francisco.

Perhaps the temperature and humidity extremes finally took their toll; the LCD screen just gave up the ghost and displays shiny colors instead of something useful like… a screen… which makes it a bit hard to aim, select options in the menu, etc.

P.S. The Golden Compass is awesome!

Update: Replaced the old cam with a Canon PowerShot SD870 IS… about the same size as the old one, but fixing most of my issues with the old Exilim:

  • Auto-rotation — the camera detects its orientation and marks the photos as rotated accordingly. I used to spend lots of time with my old one going through and rotating half of my pics after a shoot.
  • Better in low light shooting (eg indoor or evening) — higher sensitivity (ISO 1600 vs 400), image stabilization, and a mode to auto-adjust the ISO a bit higher
  • Continuous shooting mode — if I invest in new memory cards, it’ll take high-speed ones which should allow a better frame rate for those “I hope that cool thing happens while the shutter’s open” moments.
  • Better video quality — video mode shoots up to 640×480 30fps (vs 320×240 15fps). Like my old cam it’s saved as Motion-JPEG, which is very space inefficient, but I can recode for archival if I start using video mode more.
  • Time-lapse mode on the video! Neat. :D
  • Doesn’t need a dock to connect to the computer or charge.
  • More megapixels (8 vs 5) — yawn. I’m rarely going to *need* that many pixels. ;)

The menu and controls are a bit different but I’ll get the hang of it.

One minor nit is that it doesn’t look like it’ll charge the battery through USB; that would be *very* nice when traveling. The default kit includes a separate battery charger rather than an AC adaptor for the camera itself, but it’s blissfully compact and according to the specs it should work on 220 Hz volts, so traveling in Europe should be ok.

5 thoughts on “R.I.P. Casio Exilim”

  1. I think Canon should use this as a promotional phrase: “When you need a new camera in a hurry.”

    This time last year, our trusty Olympus died just days before we were to go on a 3-day cruise. I ended up running by Best Buy one evening, looking at every model in the store, and picking up a Canon PowerShot SD600. (Eventually I got the older camera repaired — it was a simple mechanical problem with the power switch — so now we both have cameras.)

    I’ve been quite happy with the PowerShot, with one exception: on this model, the switch between still photo, video, and playback is a slider. It keeps getting triggered in pockets or bags, so it’s not uncommon that I’ll whip out the camera to snap an opportunistic shot, and it’ll start taking video. By the time I can get it to switch modes, sometimes the shot’s gone. (Example here.)

    Anyway, I hope the first phase of the move went successfully and you’re ensconced in your new apartment!

  2. The 870 IS should do you nicely. Two and a half years of heavy use is pretty good for an ultracompact camera – I’ve carried my Ixus 50 (SD 400) with me everywhere for the last year and a half, and the screen’s cracked and the zoom lever doesn’t zoom out any more. But I’ve BEATEN THE LIVING CRAP OUT OF IT and taken >30,000 photos in the process. And it’s still the greatest little video camera for getting quick home movies of the baby :-D

    Canons also take better pictures than Casios. The sensors and processing in Casios are rubbish, and the lack of manual controls (even less than Canon) was really annoying. BUT they’re ridiculously thin. You don’t know how much you want a thin camera until you’ve used an Exilim.

    I want a Fujifilm F30/F31 next, because they can do good shots up to ISO 1600 and most of my photos are cute drunk people in pubs. And usually they’re cute in the photos when I’m sober! http://reddragdiva.co.uk/

  4. So far I’m still pretty happy with the beastie… the higher-ISO modes are tolerable enough for my purposes and a darn sight better than my old one. :)

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