Today, my Casio EX-S500 Exilim digital camera arrived. Smaller in size than a deck of cards, this gadget takes 5.0 mega pixel photos, records MPEG-4 movies, and has a typical 3x optical zoom.
Though I’m always excited to have a new gadget, I wonder how much I’m going to use it for my affinity for taking photos has shifted over the years.
My Photo History
As I kid, I enjoyed playing with my dad’s 35mm camera. As a teenager, I hated posing for photos for my mom. As a college student, I shifted to video and majored in communications. As a young adult, I bought a video camera and began recording my travels.
It wasn’t until last year that I started taking photos again when I obtained a Treo 600. The photos were crude, but the tiny camera was part of a gadget I carried with me at all times. More so, I could instantly upload photos I took to my website; becoming a photo blog.
A few months ago, our office upgraded to Treo 650s. Though the image quality is better, it’s still low resolution. And forget taking photos at night, neither the Treo 600 or 650 comes with a flash.
So I decided to get a stand alone camera. It doesn’t have access to the web, it doesn’t take calls, it just takes photos and video – doing both rather well. And since the EX-S500 is smaller than my Treo, I hope I’ll find myself carrying it around more often.
Quality Comparison
For giggles, I wanted to see how my new camera’s images compare to those taken by my Treos. Click on each thumbnail to see the detail in a larger image.
| Treo 600 | Treo 650 | EX-S500 |
|---|---|---|
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Never heard of a Treo but the Casio appears better in your quality tests. There may be an issue with close focus on the Treo. The cube appears to maybe be inside the minmum focus distance of the lens on both Treo shots.
Which camera did you use for your Easter Island photographs?
All of my Easter Island photos are actually screen shots of video that I took using my old Sony DCR-TRV230 Digital 8 video camera.
I simply had my computer snag a screen shot every eight seconds as I played back about three hours worth of video.
The quality isn’t very good, but the quantity is amazing.