Links: Casio EX-G1 Presntation Page / Show Official Info /

The Casio EX-G1 is as rugged a camera as the Casio G-Shock is a watch. While it's a pretty tough customer, it's also smart and good looking in either its red or black trim. The EX-G1 has plenty of features you'll find handy whether in the great outdoors or at a great party, including a host of automatically selected best shot modes, a movie mode that's always ready to go, and even a high intensity LED recording light to light your video recording. In fact, this is a very feature rich camera, yet one that slips into your pocket easily and can be counted on to record the most exciting moments of your adventures, no matter how rough the going gets.

Casio's EX-G1 brings ruggedness to the Exilim line without sacrificing sleekness or performance. Besides being feature rich, which it is, the camera has break out style and looks great in either red or black, in a sexy gear-head sort of way. Those good looks come from some well thought out functionality in the design, because Casio's designers know that you'll be taking the camera places where you have your hands full, and quite likely in gloves as well, but still want to record the great time you're having...whether it's whitewater rafting, hanging off the side of a mountain, or kicking back at the ski-lodge. Adventurers like to travel light, and the Casio EX-G1 meets that agenda without sacrificing performance.

Pros:

The camera's small sensor does make images pretty noisy above 400 ISO or so, but that's to be expected, and if you're hoping to make fine art pictures of low light scenes you're already packing a DSLR and a tripod. If, on the other hand, you want to get some shots off of a critter that wandered into your campsite without using the flash, you'll get good enough shots to show your friends and to immortalize the encounter. The recording light operates in still picture mode as well as video, and you'll find it's perfect for lighting up the inside of a tent without blinding everyone for the rest of the night.

The camera is waterproof to a shallow depth, which means you can take it canoeing, rafting, or into the shower with confidence. Go ahead, take some flash pictures of water falling inches from the camera. The flash control is good enough to keep from whiting things out and you'll get some interesting shots.

A rare feature that's useful for a number of wilderness adventures is the camera's ability to take pictures or movies at regular intervals, allowing you to make your own time lapse images or just to show

Cons:

There are only two things I'm not happy with on the EX-G1, both relating to it's battery charging. First, the camera doesn't charge through its USB cable, which I consider normal for small cameras, and since the alternative means dragging along a 115v charger and its cord, it kind of defeats the whole purpose of keeping the camera small. Granted, if you're off for a day hike, or even a weekend trip, the battery will almost certainly hold up. If it doesn't though, you'll come to my second criticism, which is that the battery isn't easy to get out of its compartment. On a camera with brilliant ergonomics overall, they've managed to make the battery compartment really hard to get open. First you have to pull back a catch, then you're supposed to slip your fingernail under the edge lip of the compartment and open it. The problem is that there's no room for both fingers in the space available, no matter how small your hands might be. Gloved? Forget-about-it. The one scene setting that I missed on the camera's settings was something to stitch panoramas together, which seems like a natural for a camera you're going to take in the great outdoors. Especially since the lens only goes down to a 35mm equivalence, rather than say 28mm, which would let you take in a bit more.

Conclusion:

The emphasis here is on the camera's toughness, and there's no question it delivers. As a camera, it's OK, and it's menu system is better than OK, which is handy when you're in the wilds, or some rugged environment. Unfortunately, you give up some things in order to get that toughness, including a larger display and easy battery access, though the latter should have been designed better.