Casio Exilim EX-Z80

Opinion: Solidly built, easy to hold. Video functions basic but eminently practical: 320x240 .MOV files, with sound (mono) extremely economical with memory (100 minutes occupies barely half a 2 GB SD card); zoom permitted in video.

For stills, there's less to be said: flash options reside on the joystick button, but toggling macro requires a painful and time-consuming dive into the menu system; focus is often less than crisp, except under close-up or macro conditions in good light or with flash; barrel distortion is very noticeable at full Tele and at full Wide; flash calibration is quite good at distances from 12 inches (30 cm) through 6-7 feet (2 meters), without blitzing out or under-illumination.

The battery is rechargeable *only* in a dedicated charge tray, but has always lasted me all day -- just remember to charge overnight before next use.

Tripod socket and battery cover are hard plastic, but well-engineered; USB/AV port cover is a tiny, fiddly, metallic hinged thingy that is hard to get out of the way of the USB/AV cables.

Overall: very happy with the video implementation, content with the battery life, less than thrilled with the EX-Z80's inability to focus accurately at all distances.

Opinion: Highly recommended.

Excellent stills and fantastic video quality.

Best of all for anyone wanting a camera for clubbing, it handles extreme sound pressures with ease. I shot some video right next to the speaker at a local trance night so loud that it sounded loud to me with clubbing ear plugs in - 18db. The audio on the videos is perfect no distortion and as clear as day. Perfect!!

For comparison, my Canon IXUS used to distort anywhere in the room never mind next to the speakers so badly you couldn't even make the tune out.

9.5 out of 10 for this camera. Drops 0.5 simply because I'd like some control over the video gain and the 10 min max single file restriction removing.

Just wanted to add TLV above has mentioned video at 320 x 240. This is I think misleading because although it does great video at that resolution, it can far capture natively far bigger at fanastic quality.

This camera captures video at 848 x 480 which is above PAL tv resolution but below HD and at a full 30fps. In good light, it gives my £900 HD Canon Camcorder a run for its money. In poorer light its still good but not as good as dedicated camcorder. Picture wise its nearer to HD to SD. If you need a stills with excellent video capabilities then this is your camera.

Opinion: The most interisting thing about this camera is it makes suberb quality videos in wide mode, editing in adobe premiere it was on par with a $ 1000 cancorder.
Pictures are on par with small cameras , the menu is very easy no navigate.
It turns on very very fast.

Opinion: I don't usually do reviews, but i had 3 casio cameras and looked into many more over the last several years. I was never particularly happy with any of them but kept them because i WAS happy with the movie mode due to the compression which allows 2 hours straight of movie recording on a 2 gig card. But the still were never better than acceptable, and that was with only maybe one shot out of 3. The noise in the details mad for pics that even when viewed screen size just never looked right. On a fluke i tried a Z80 after it caught my eye in a store. I wasn't even looking for a camera. But at 1/2 the price i paid for my last casio i figured it was worth the 14 day trial which the store manager offered to me w/o the usual restocking fee. I took it home and after looking at just a handfull of pics and videos i immediatly knew it was a huge departure from what casio had been producing in the last several years. The pics looked completely different as tho they were from a different brand of camers. to be more specific, they looked like what canon typically used to produce in thier elph series before they went downhill, but with all the state of the art things such as 8.1 MP and a killer movie mode with the new H.264 codec. One look at the movie quality and i realized it was by fat the best i ever saw in any non dedicated movie cam, and maybe as good as some of those !

in any case, at $159 i consider this camera a ridiculous value. Even at twice the cost it is because no other P&S camera i'm aware of takes such great pics and video and with no need for manual control and user experience. If you are a novice and just want extrememly good pics w/o having to learn photograpy, this will give you far more than you could ever ask for. If you're a hobbiest, you may get results as good as anything in the P&S category, but you may be unhappy without a lot of manual control because people like that want more than just perfect results. They want to have control whether or not it gets them better results. This is the first camera i have ever been totally satisfied with and more, and it's also about 1/2 the cost of any other i've had ! I cannot for the life of me see how anyone familiar with what P&S cameras typically produce on average could possibly be less than thrilled with the results this camera produces. By the way, tho i'm not a hobbiest or photographer in any sense, i've had my share of digital cams and i'm not easily satisfied.