FC100 Casio High-Speed, Fun little camera for..

Overall Rating44444

Fun little camera for shooting slow-mo.

As a simple point and shoot, this camera delivers a ton of options geared towards non-experienced photographers, meaning, no manual controls. But on the flip-side it gives you a whole bunch of custom shooting modes. Almost to the point where it feels like a type of pseudo-manual control. Instead of setting you aperture to wide open for portraits, you just set it for portrait shooting. Instead of setting a high shutter speed at your kid’s soccer game, you set it to high-speed sports. I can live with that.

As for video, the title of this review sums it up. Don’t expect to shoot anything of real quality with this camera. First of all, you need a lot of light. Otherwise, the noise is pretty bad. Secondly, this being a CMOS sensor, the jello-effect is pretty pervasive. Plan on using a tripod or monopod whenever possible. Handheld footage is pretty awful, even with the stabilizer turned on.

Despite this, I did have fun recording my golf swing at 210fps. And when it comes down to it, this camera is meant for fun and it delivers.

Update (2/9/2012): I also found some auctions for this item here.

The featured review for this product, Casio High-Speed Exilim EX-FC100 9 MP Digital Camera with 5x Optical Image Stabilized Zoom and 2.7-inch LCD Electronics, was written by K. Shin.

The average rating for this item is 4 out of 5 stars, according to 3 reviews.

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Reviews (3)

Jason L. Hall

April 29th, 2010 at 9:04 pm    


Overall Rating55555

Casio Exilim FC100 = FUN
Just received this little powerhouse today and have already made a panorama and a high speed video. Really easy, and just really a fun little camera - and it has its flaws, of course.

One quick note: you must feed this camera LIGHT, especially in the high-speed video and 30fps burst modes. Expecting anything decent indoors or at night and you’ll be disappointed. The regular still pictures are fine, though. I viewed plenty of high speed clips on YouTube and indoors you will get flicker (usually from flourescent lighting), but it still does the job. This camera shines outdoors.

There are three main functions that are really great and unique (can’t emphasize unique enough) for a P&S.

1. High-speed video: the 30 - 210 is awesome. 210 on its own is good too, obviously. 420 is good for a science experiment or something that you really don’t care about the size and resolution (plus massive compression). 210 FPS will show you a whole new world. And it does do 1000 FPS, basically useless but if you need to see how a lighter works then well, 1000 FPS is for you.

2. 30 FPS burst: This is really a nice feature. The FC100 takes 30 6 megapixel shots in one second. Think about that for a second, very cool. And the images are clean and clear. Quality is fine, unless you’re a pixel perfectionist. I did a quick panorama of San Francisco (from Alameda) by simply clicking on the shutter button and moving the camera (quickly) from left to right. Stitched them back together for a nice panorama that I didn’t waste a lot of time taking manual pics. But this function has some many other uses. I’ll probably use it most of the time for any old pic because you can select the best (camera also will do this automatically for you) and delete the rest. Pretty cool. You can even set it to start taking images BEFORE you hit the shutter (when you hit the shutter, the camera has already cached a specified number of images in case you miss something by a fraction of a second. I’m not using the SLOW feature that basically is another way of doing the above.

3. 720P Video: One of the other reviewers didn’t like that this camera doesn’t allow autofocus (or zoom) during HD video. I use a different camcorder for video, so I just like having the option just in case. Looks nice.

The high speed features are more than a gimmick, imo. The 210 FPS and one-second 30 FPS (@ 6 megapix) burst modes are worth it alone. This camera isn’t made for a family portrait or the second coming of Ansel Adams. Use it what it’s good for - outdoor sporting events, fast action, even your dog chasing a squirrel - and you’ll be happy. I am.

This review by CrunchGear nails it: http://www.crunchgear.com/2009/03/30/review-casio-exilim-fc-100/


R. Reinhardt

May 8th, 2010 at 7:08 am    


Overall Rating33333

Auto Focus does not work during Video.
I have a 4 year old Casio EX-Z750 that I love, so I know something about what a great camera Casio can make. This one fell short for me because of one simple reason. Auto Focus does not work during Standard or HD movies. A bigger problem is that you can’t even get focused and then start videoing because it has something called “Fixed Focal Length”. This is technical jargon for “We were too lazy to do the focus right.” My 4 year old Casio EX-Z750 auto focuses during video. The videos that the old camera takes are awesome. The videos this one takes are all blurry because of the focus issue. Hopefully Casio will get their act together and put together a firmware to fix this. I have contacted support and let them know about my discontent with this and if others do as well, I think it can be addressed. Like I said, their camera could do it 4 years ago.

Beyond my HUGE complaint. The high speed video is awesome. It takes great pictures and video of action. They got the part that most people are buying this camera for right. The problem is I bought it to also take awesome regular speed HD videos. I purchased a 16 GB card for it since I knew that it would eat a lot of space to do these videos. The problem here is that the camera will only take videos up to 4 GB in size. This means 18 minutes. 54 minutes in standard. Yes I can have 4 4 GB files on one card, but if I am going to video a performance of something I don’t want to have to hit start and stop every 18 minutes. This isn’t a deal killer like the lack of focus, but it’s annoying. You cannot change the detail level to something like EP, LP, SP like with a video camera. Just 18 minutes or 54. The camera records video in MJPEG. This means huge file sizes. My macbook pro easily opens the files and visual hub quickly converts them to smaller MP4 files without loosing much quality. I wish the camera recorded in h.264, but it’s okay that it doesn’t for this price.

It’s nice having a dedicated video button, but they put it in the wrong spot. I am constantly hitting the camera button next to the play button to start videos. I am sure I will adjust over time, but that’s where the button should have been. Another thing I miss is that my Z750 allowed me to choose to have the right and left selects switch between white balance. It’s still easy to change, I just miss that ability. The white balance on auto works well and the manual white balance fixes when it doesn’t.

The camera mechanicals are a lot slower than my Z750. The Z750 blasts the lens out of the body in what seems like an instant and is ready to start taking shots. The FC100 takes a couple seconds longer in turning on and off.

This is not a bad camera for the price, but Casio had a chance to make an awesome camera for the price. Hopefully they will get their act together and fix the focus issue. If they do, this is a 5 star camera for me. Til then it is only 3 star.


K. Shin

May 20th, 2010 at 2:08 pm    


Overall Rating44444

Fun little camera for shooting slow-mo.
Rated 4 stars.


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