Using the camera

Casio has designed the Exilim EX-Z40 to be easy to use. This does mean some more sophisticated features are missing. There is no manual control of aperture and shutter speed settings, nor full manual exposure mode. This will frustrate some photographers but at least you can manually select ISO speeds to suit conditions and white balance settings. 21 scene-specific modes are available and you can set your own scene mode based on a photo you have previously taken. Unfortunately, the printed user guide supplied is far too brief and offers no help for the camera's more advanced features. A much more detailed manual is supplied as a pdf document on the utility CD.

Compact camera operation checklists

Exposure modes:

Full auto program	Yes
Exposure over and under bias control	Yes
Auto with user choice of shutter speed and aperture	No
Shutter priority auto	No
Aperture priority auto	No
Manual exposure	No
Manual ISO speed selection	Yes
Spot metering	No
Matrix metering	Yes
Live histogram	Yes
Histogram in instant review mode	No

Notes: There are 21 scene-specific modes with useful advice and example images shown on-screen. The ISO speed is not recorded in the EXIF camera data for each image, a worrying trend in cameras recently.

Focus modes:

Spot autofocus	Yes
Wide autofocus	Yes
User selectable AF points	No
Manual focus	Yes
Manual focus check zoom	Yes
Infinity lock	Yes
Close focus (macro)	Yes

Notes – Manual focus is a nice touch and works quite well. A novel feature is Pan Focus (PF) mode. This switches autofocus off and sets the focus to an optimal point according to the zoom and aperture setting to capture moderately near and far subject with the depth of field (sharp focus) range of the lens. AS AF is switched off, delays while the focus is being determined, although generally not a problem with the EX-Z40, are avoided completely. PF can also be employed with AF switched. When enabled, if you don't half-press the shutter release to give time for the AF to kick-in, the camera defaults to PF mode instead. It's a clever way of combating the perennial problem of shutter delay in digital cameras and in our hands it worked quite well.

Flash:

Slow sync	No
Red-eye reduction	Yes
Flash hot shoe	No
External sync socket	No

Notes: There isn't a manual slow sync option for lighting up the background when using flash, but some of the night time scene modes appear to offer a similar solution.

Shooting modes:

Continuous shooting	No
Self timer	Yes
Short delay self timer	Yes
Movie mode	Yes
Sound with movie	Yes
Audio record only	Yes

Notes: Movie mode is AVI motion JPEG at QVGA (320x240) resolution. Quality is nothing to write home about and the frame rate is rather low. It's surprising that a continuous shooting mode is not provided.

Image quality controls:

Sharpness	No
White balance	Yes
Colour saturation	No
Contrast	No
Post-shot red-eye removal	No
Smart image optimisation	No

Notes: Pre-programmed scene-specific modes available provide set adjustments to some of these parameters.

Framing aids:

Grid	Yes
Scene-only view	Yes
Focus distance scale	Yes (PF mode only)
Panorama stitching	No

Notes: Although the LCD is large, it only has 85,000 dots, which makes the screen display slightly coarse. Although the visible viewing angle of the TFT display was good, display quality deteriorated noticeably when bright areas were being displayed. The screen was difficult to view in bright sunlight. Low light viewing was also afflicted by on-screen noise.

Playback:

Zoom	Yes up to 4x
Multiple thumbnail browse	Yes 9 at a time
Histogram view	Yes
Exposure setting information	Yes
Resize	Yes
Rotate	Yes
Crop	Yes
Original image retained after edit	Yes
DPOF print order selection	Yes
Image protect (from erasure)	Yes
Slide show	Yes

Notes: Playback facilities are good so it's a shame you can't connect the camera to a TV.

External connectivity:

Pictbridge	Via docking cradle only
Audio port	No
Video port	No
USB	Via docking cradle only
High Speed USB	No
Firewire IEEE1394	No
Power	Via docking cradle only
Universal world standard AC adapter	Via docking cradle only

Notes: The docking cradle supports an automatic image download function when used with supplied software. USB transfers can be made without the AC adapter attached. Transfer rates of about 0.6MB/sec were measured only rising marginally when transferring to or from a high-speed SD card, indicating the USB port is not of the high-speed variety. The relatively large llithium ion battery lasted extremely well between charges.

Handling
As its large screen dominates the back of the EX-Z40, it's all too easy to press a button by accident when handling the camera. The buttons are far too sensitive to resist accidental pressure.

You can directly power-on the camera in either playback or recording mode using one of the two buttons above the screen without having to use the top-plate power button.

Responsiveness
The EX-Z40 takes about two seconds to power-up or power-down, which is good, but not the fastest in class. Autofocus speed is good and generally accurate when the central spot mode is used. Overall shutter responsiveness, including AF lock, was also judged to be good and delay was hardly detectable in practice when the Pan Focus mode was employed.

A continuous shooting mode is not offered with the EX-Z40. By repeatedly pressing the shutter release, if you use the cameras's internal memory or an inexpensive slow SD or MMC card, you can shoot two or maybe three pictures, two seconds apart, before the buffer fills and prevents another shot from being made. The good news is that by using a high-speed SD card, the buffer was emptied faster than we could shoot the next shot at a rate of about one shot every two seconds.

Operational noise
Full control over the volume of operational 'beeps' and other sounds generated by the camera is provided. The lens extension, zooming and autofocus motors are generally unobtrusive and refined.

Software
Two software CDs are supplied with the Casio Exilim EX-Z40, one containing Casio software, plus a crucial extended camera user guide in pdf form and the second CD contains a copy of Kodak EasyShare 3.2.

The first Casio software utility is called Photo Loader:


Photo Loader detects when the camera is docked and connected via USB and automatically prompts you to start copying images from the camera.

Transfer progress is indicated by a bright green status bar.


Once the pictures have been loaded, you can view them using Internet Explorer. If you have Windows XP Service Pack 2 installed, Photo Loader falls foul of IE's added suppression of pop-up windows, though you can switch this off if you prefer.

Some might find themselves at home with Photo Loader, but it's difficult to see what advantage it has over good old Windows My Pictures image viewing.

The second program from Casio is called Photohands:


This is a very basic and rather over-simplified image fixer program. It rather looks like it was designed for kids to use.

Someone at Casio must have realised that the own-branded software above wasn't particularly inspiring, which possibly explains why a Kodak EasyShare CD was thrown in:


EasyShare is a well thought out image management package for beginners which features an album system, CD-burning capabilities and key word organisation of selected images. It also has some good basic image fixing and enhancing facilities. It also helps you to print photos to your computer's printer or via a Kodak online photo printing service. And it's free – well, the software at least - you can download the latest version from Kodak's Web site. It's certainly a lot better than the Casio software.

Unfortunately, EasyShare is also a controversial package. It uses a BackWeb routine to maintain the software by background checking for latest versions. Unfortunately, BackWeb is associated with so-called Spyware and does trigger anti-Spyware alerts. We have been repeatedly assured by Kodak that no information is stolen by its use of BackWeb in EasyShare and we are confident this is fact. Anyway, if you have a good software firewall installed on your computer you should be able prevent BackWeb from bothering you, though you will have to manually update your software when the next new version is released.