Casio EXILIM ZOOM EX-Z850 8.1 MP Digital Camera - Silver

I'm an experienced amateur photographer who is used to digital SLR cameras. My girlfriend bought me this one as a gift, and lately I've been finding myself using this one almost exclusively, with my big Canon sitting in the closet collecting dust! I know what you're thinking, how can you compare a $350 ultra-compact to a digital SLR camera? Honestly, in normal conditions the pictures are indestinguishable from a picture taken with a Canon 20D, even professionally printed at 8x10! Yes, it lacks advanced features like exchangeable lenses and external flash, but it introduces a new quality to photography that SLR cameras just can't offer. Spontinaity. I find the most incredible photographs are not planned, but just happen spontaneously. You happen to be at the right place and the right time, and you see the 'perfect photo', and you wish you had your camera on you. With the Exilim EX-Z850, you can ALWAYS have your camera on you. This camera's actually smaller than my cell phone, and it is always in my pocket. The durable all-metal housing and fully-retracting lens allows you to stick it in a soft case and slide it into your pocket with no worries. Also, speed. This camera is ready to snap a picture in just over a second of pressing the power button. The lens comes out fast enough to keep up with a bullet! And with the manual picture mode, there are no compromises. Manual features include manual shutter speed (1/1600th of a second to 60 seconds), manual aperature settings (f2.8-f7.4), manual white balance, manual ev-shift, manual ISO settings (ISO50-ISO400), even an adjustable flash with a total of 15 different intesity settings! I've seen other point-and-shoot cameras with manual modes, but most are a joke. With this one, the settings actually work just like on my SLR! And then there are things my SLR can't do. For instance, VGA videos at 30 frames-per-second! That's almost DVD quality, and it doesn't look half-bad when burnt to DVD either! Over 1 hour of high-quality video fits on my 2 gig SD card. In-camera post-processing, video editing, and even keystone correction is very handy, and while it doesn't replace Photoshop, it can be rather fun. When I first got this camera, I was skeptical about the usability, since I couldn't imagine how all these features could be easily operated on such a small device. I've used other compact feature-packed cameras, such as the Sony Cybershot models with the fancy touch-screen, and they were just impractical and difficult to operate. To my amazement, Casio blew me away with their interface on this camera. No ridiculous touch-screen; no long complicated menus. Everything is layed out in seperate quick-access menus that have special buttons assigned to them, and in just a day I was setting this thing up for advanced manual shots in just seconds. While the auto snap-shot mode produces beautiful photos, the manual modes will satisfy even the most experiences photographers. My recommendation: don't sell your SLR just yet, but add this one to your collection. Just like a good soldier has his rifle, but always carries his side-arm, every photographer should have one of these near by. You never know when you'll run into that 'perfect shot', and you won't have to compromise much with this ultra-mini SLR!

When I first pulled out my little Casio Z850 on a cruise with my family, it didn't get much applause from my tech-savvy brothers. They have very expensive, high tech Sony and Fuji cameras. However, by the end of the cruise, they both planned to get one.
The Casio has extremely powerful features, and is far more usable than other compact, high end cameras. Here are some examples of why the Casio left the other cameras in the dust, and why I personally enjoy it so much.
-It is a fantastic value. Ebay has many auctions for less than $300 now with a memory card and case included. I would shy away from dicey online camera stores though.
-The pictures come out perfect. Period.
-The video mode lasts as long as you have memory, so there is no time limit on the length of your videos.
-The 'snapshot' mode makes taking great photos a snap. It automatically adjusts to the surrounding conditions and makes nearly perfect photos without adjusting a thing.
-If the 'snapshot' mode is good, the 'best shot' mode is incredible. I especially like the wide angle landscape mode, the low light modes, the macro mode for flowers, lizards, and bugs, and my personal favorite: color filters. You can bring out the green of the greens in Jamaica or the red of the sunset over water. My brothers' photos were good, mine, with the filters, are worthy of framing.
-The camera seems very durable. My wife and I have dropped this baby several times, and accidentally exposed it to heavy rain, and it still chugs along.
-Low light modes are fantastic for video and photos. There is a 'rec' light on the front of the camera that assists in red-eye reduction, video capture, and highlighting people in the viewfinder (which, during a fairly well lit dinner, the Sony only showed brown, black, and red in the viewfinder)
-The cradle it comes with is very easy to use, and if you don't want to use it, you can find a cheap SD card reader. Unfortunately, it has to charge on the cradle.
-Speaking of charging the camera, it takes only a few hours to charge, and during a 7 day cruise with more than 4gb of pictures and video taken, we charged it ONCE!
-The cradle allows it to easily transfer photos to the computer via USB, and also allows you to play slide shows on any TV with RCA inputs. It may not be high-def, but the pictures look crisp, colorful, and realistic on my 50 inch HD.
-It has some easy access buttons to quickly get you to the settings you need. Unlike the Sony with its fancy touch screen, the Casio Z850 flips to all your important modes, picture quality settings, megapixel settings, and 'best shot' settings with one or two pushes of a button.
-The burst modes are awesome! You can choose 3 shot, a 2 picture zoom burst (which takes one shot zoomed out then zooms in for a 'close up' in no time) or a 16 shot burst. Unfortunately, for full-sized images the 3 shot is as many as you can take. The 16 shot burst sticks it all on one canvas.
To sum it all up, if you are looking for comfortable-to-fit-in-your-poc​ket camera with the right price that outperforms its much more expensive competitors, this is it. My only gripes are that the optical zoom is limited (although digital zoom does an admirable job, for a first) and as of yet there is no underwater housing for serious scuba diving.

I have had many digital cameras over the past years. This Exilim EX-Z850 is the best yet. Several very important features are in this camera. The Flash effective range goes all the way down to .33", that is almost hitting the lens. What good is a camera that has macro mode and a 2 foot flash range. This .33 is superb. The anti-shake stabilization works great. Again what good is a powerful zoom if the picture is blurry. This camera takes great pictures indoors and outdoors. The eBay setting is perfect for your auctions. The only complaint is the included instruction book is only 21 pages long. Casio web site has the full 200+ page book ready for download in a .pdf for free. You will not be sorry you purchased this camera!

This camera takes great pictures. I purchased this model because of my earlier experience with Casio's Z-50 camera, a 5 megapixel camera. The battery lasts forever. I've taken a mix of photo's (i.e. with & without flashes) and battery lasted for almost 500 shots.

The controls are well placed, and easy to access. Because of the long battery life, I recommend purchasing a 2 gig SD memory card! This way, you won't run out of memory before you do battery! I also purchased a second battery when I purchased my Z-50 camera, because I didn't know how long the battery would last, and I've never used it on the Z-50, but have used it twice on the Z-850. The Z-50 & Z-850 use the same battery. How lucky is that! And the reason I used the back up battery was simply because I wasn't charging the battery between picture dumps. I took around 500 pictures in the first two weeks of purchasing the camera, and was not unimpressed with the battery life. Everyone else around was buying up batteries for their digital cameras, and I was still snap, snap, snapping away! Of course I was in Norway, and the cold could have affected the battery life some what, but it still lasted over 500 shots! I really do like this camera a lot! If not for any other reason than battery life!

So far, the only thing I disliked about the camera is when I set it for putting the timestamp on the pictures, it placed the camera in a mode where I cannot use the full zoom function. It could simply be my incorrect settings, as I did not investigate fully why this was. So, this, again could simply be operator error.

One problem I did have with this camera is the rear display. I broke it with out realizing what happened. Not the camera's fault, but mostly my being careless with it. I had the camera in my front pocket, and I leaned over to look at something and the next time I went to use the camera, the display was damaged. Even with the broken display, I continued to use the camera and take excellent pictures using the small site glass. I just could not change any settings while doing so. So, because the display takes up a lot of real estate on the back of the camera, be careful about placing it in a pants pocket. You'll be tempted to do so, but don't! Buy a good quality camera bag/case that fits around your waist or hooks on a belt and use that instead. Other wise you'll be like me, and sorry you did it!

I liked the camera so much, I purchased a second one, and plan on having the first one repaired. If you are looking for a camera with good resolution, that is fairly inexpensive, small and relatively compact and with loooong battery life, then this is a highly recommended model for you to consider!

The Casio EXILIM ZOOM EX-Z850 8.1 Megapixel digital camera was just what I was looking for. It has amazing picture quality, a huge LCD display screen (2.5 inches), has an incredibly small size and is very light weight. However the screen is very sensitive and is very suseptible to breaking. I already have several little stress cracks on mine. Also the zoom is not the best but it gets the job done (big upgrade from the 7.2 megapixel exilim with the new anti-shake feature). I love the camera and would recommend it to anyone who wants a small camera with really high quality pictures but is going to treat it with a lot of care and not mind the zoom. I give it a 5/5. Hope this helps and if you have further questions, feel free to drop me a message. Later, Nick