Casio Exilim EX-S600 review

The EX-S600 lacks a true burst mode -- its continuous mode simply shoots pictures at a clip of about one every 4 seconds as long as you keep the shutter release depressed.

Shooting speed
(Shorter bars indicate better performance)

Typical shot-to-shot time

Time to first shot

Shutter lag (typical)

Sony Cyber-shot DSC-T9

1.3 

1.7 

0.3 

Sony Cyber-shot DSC-S600

1.3 

1.8 

0.4 

Sanyo Xacti VPC-E6

2.3 

2 

0.7 

Casio Exilim EX-S600

2.6 

2.3 

0.7 

Nikon Coolpix S4

2.8 

2.5 

0.8 

Olympus FE-120

2.6 

4.9 

1.3 

Image quality
The Casio Exilim EX-S600's image quality is fair to poor, depending upon how closely you look at the photos. Shots taken under typical conditions aren't very sharp, and a combination of poor focus and compression artefacts make photos look more like paintings. While the camera exposes well in the midtones, shadows lack detail and highlights tend to blow out. Chromatic aberration occurs more frequently than we typically see, with purple fringing quite evident around moderately high-contrast edges. Colours pop, however, and the red-eye prevention preflash worked well for most of our people shots.
 

 

Scaled down, the EX-S600's photos are very pleasing and have plenty of snap (top). But with the images at full size, you can see how smearing obscures the details (bottom). It becomes even more pronounced toward the edges of the scene, as the lens's focus degrades

 
Because of the poor lens and postprocessing artefacts, noise at the ISO 200 setting completely eradicates details and, as you'd expect, gets progressively worse as you raise the setting. However, the grainy high-ISO shots are still better than having no picture at all or resorting to the anaemic flash unit.

Edited by Lori Grunin
Additional editing by Nick Hide