Casio Exilim EX-Z120

Reviewed March 2006

Test Photos

STILL LIFE PHOTO

This subject is photographed in a room that has a mix of fluorescent and incandescent light, but which is not brightly lit. The camera's flash is used to add fill light. The backdrop is 1.95 m (6.5 ft) from the camera.

To obtain an image with a normal brightness level, the CCD sensitivity must be set to Auto ISO, allowing the camera to increase it as necessary. The result is that the increased sensitivity improves the effectiveness of the EX-Z120's tiny built in flash and its ability to light the subject. With this subject, the camera increases sensitivity to 100 ISO.

The image captured by the camera is evenly lit, but has a faintly yellow cast due to the combination of lighting. And, when seen at 100% on a monitor, a slight bit of noise can be detected in the shadows and in areas of uniform colour.

ZOOM PHOTO

Now we zoom in on a specific area. The intent is to test the sharpness of the image at the zoom's maximum setting. The camera remains at the same distance as with the preceding photo.

At the maximum telephoto setting of the zoom, the equivalent of a 114 mm on a 35 mm camera, the brightest aperture available to the EX-Z120 becomes f5.1. This forces the camera to increase the sensitivity to 200 ISO to capture an acceptably bright image.

Worth noting, the slightly yellow cast of the wide angle shot is absent with this image as the auto white balance produces more accurate colours.

At 200 ISO, noise can be detected throughout the image, and in combination with the compression, has the effect of softening the sharpness.

MACRO PHOTO

Using the Macro mode, which is selected as one of the AF modes with the up arrow of the 4-direction control, the EX-Z120 is able to focus on a subject positioned between 10 and 50 cm (3.9 and 19.7 in.) when the zoom is at the wide angle end, and between 50 and 60 cm (19.7 to 23.4 in.) at the telephoto end.

When the zoom is at the wide angle end, the field of view captured by the camera is approximately 8.8 cm (3.52 in.), while at the telephoto end the camera captures approximately 12.2 cm (4.88 in.).

BUILDING PHOTO

This image is our outdoor test. The architecture of the building, in particular the angled girders, immediately show the presence of jaggies. The shadowed entrance can also often reveal the quality of the exposure.

With the kind of daylight available in late Winter, the shadows are usually deep and the contrasts can be quite violent. Given these conditions, the building tends to become a dark mass on the light grey foreground of the paving stones and a milky-white sky in the background.

Using the Multi metering of the EX-Z120, a better exposure is obtained if an exposure compensation setting of +1/3 EV is applied. The photo reveals no particular barrel distortion, and no chromatic aberration.

ZOOM PHOTO

Zooming in on the entrance of the building, the shadowed entrance takes on a greater importance for the metering and can cause an overexposure of sections that are directly lit.

Although the area framed when the zoom is at the maximum telephoto is different from the wide angle, a similar exposure compensation turns out to be necessary. Using +1/3 EV, elements within the darker entrance area of the building can be captured while avoiding the overexposure of those areas that are receiving more light.

NIGHT PHOTO

This camera is capable of long exposures, and an image captured late at night is presented to give an idea of its capabilities.

The Manual and Shutter Priority modes of the EX-Z120 allow exposures as long as 60 seconds, while the Night Scene mode is limited to 4 seconds maximum.

With the availability of such a long exposure time, the camera offers a great deal of flexibility when it comes to night photography, and a significantly longer exposure time than is required to capture a clear photo of an urban scene such as this one.

The lens has only 2 apertures, and their precise value changes according to the zoom's position.

At approximately mid-zoom, the smallest aperture, f4 when the zoom is at the wide angle end, becomes equivalent to f6, and this, in combination with an exposure time of 20 seconds at 50 ISO, yields the photo presented here.

The camera appears to use a noise reduction system, albeit not a dark frame system, as the post-capture processing is just a few seconds long. Nevertheless, as can be seen below in the image section, there is little noise and the overall sharpness is very reasonable.