Casio EX Z150

Reviewed December 2008

Interface & Software

As with most digital cameras, the Z150's menu system is organized around recording and playback functions.

The recording menu as three tabs: Record, Quality and Set Up.

From the recording menu, you can control the Focus mode (auto, macro, etc.), focus area, continuous shooting, self-timer, face detection and image stabilization. Here are some other settings that can be controlled from the Record tab.

· easy Mode. Toggles mode for fully automtic picture taking.
· L/R Key. Allows you to define functions for the left and right keys on the Arrow Pad. Options include changing metering mode, accessing exposure compensation control, altering White Balance, chosing an ISO value and picking a self-timer function.
· Review. When activated, will display image on LCD for one second after capture.
· Icon Help. Displays additional information about a function when its icon is selected on the LCD.
· Memory. Lets you choose what settings will revert to their defaults when the camera powers up.

Various image quality and exposure settings can be accessed from the Quality tab. You can control image size and quality; choose video quality; and pick exposure compensation, White Balance and ISO values.

Also from the Quality tab, you can pick a metering mode; apply a color filter, such as sepia, blue or pink; alter settings for sharpness, saturation and contrast; and tweak the light intensity of the built-in flash.

The Set Up menu contains a grab bag of functions for the camera. It lets you toggle the unit's Control Panel, for example. The panel gives you quick access to a number of frequently used functions. However, it does clip the amount of image that appears on the screen so you may want to turn it off from time to time. Here are some other options available from the Set Up menu.

· Sounds. Lets you pick sounds for certain camera functions and the volume levels for the unit.
· File No. Determines how image files are numbered. They can be numbered continuously or numbering can be reset when files are deleted or a new memory card is inserted in the digcam.
· World Time. Let's you track the time in a city other than your hometown.
· Timestamp. When activated, attaches a time stamp to images as they're captured.
· Adjust. Provides a quick way to modify an existing date and time setting.

The Set Up menu also permits you to chose a date style, pick the display language for menus, modify the camera's sleep mode, configure the unit's auto power settings, define the power properties of the record and playback buttons and set the USB port for use with a computer or printer.

The Playback menu is for tapping into functions related to displaying and printing images. With it, you can display photos in the camera as a slideshow; order images for printing; protect files from deletion; rotate, resize and crop images; add audio to a photo and copy files between the camera's internal memory and a storage card, or vice versa.

Along with the Play tab in the Playback menu, there's a Set Up tab that will give you access to the same set up functions available from the Record tab.

Three Windows imaging programs are included with the Z150. We don’t know if we had a bad disk or some ornery installer software, but installing the applications took more effort than expected.

The disk spun forever in our computer’s disk drive before finally loading the installer interface. And only two programs could be installed from the installer. The third, Hot Album, had to be installed manually by opening the CD and launching a setup program. What’s more, that installation gave our anti-virus software fits and performed numerous functions that we had to instruct the AV app to ignore.

Photo Loader with Hot Album is software for organizing photos into albums and creating video CDs from photos. The interface isn’t all that intuitive and the application has disabled features that can only be activated by spending cash on an upgrade.

Photo Transport is a utility program for sending photos from a computer to the camera, something that can be accomplished with a simple drag and drop from a Windows Explorer window to the snapper when it’s connected to a PC.

For quick uploading to the YouTube video sharing site, the Z150 includes software for that purpose. When the camera is connected to a PC, the software scopes out its storage card for video files and automatically sends them to the YouTube application for uploading.