Digital Trends

Casio Exilim EX-Z77 August 20th, 2007 | by Jason Tomczak

Setup and Use

Setting up the Exilim EX-Z77 is very easy and takes less than a few minutes. After opening the product packaging, the first thing you'll want to do is charge the battery. Place the Casio battery in the wall charging unit and plug it in. The battery should charge up to 80 percent or more in just a couple hours.

While the battery is charging, open the memory card/battery bay on the bottom of the camera and insert an SD card. If you plan to use the stalwart for anything other than low-res photos, we recommend getting a memory card no smaller than 1GB. If you want a 2GB card, they can be found online for about $20 USD.

One of the more important features of a digital camera — for people who are serious about taking good photos — is the LCD screen. Aside from the eye of the photographer, the LCD screen offers the very first opportunity for quality control. If you see that a photo is under- or overexposed, you've missed part of the scene, or the image is out of focus, then you know to take the shot over again. When an LCD screen is of insufficient quality, it's very hard to tell whether your photo is bad or if it's just the camera's display. Unfortunately, the LCD screen on the EX-Z77 falls short of expectations, making it tough to maintain solid control over image quality.

Real Life Tests

When selecting a digital camera, impressive specs are certainly something you want to look for, but even more important is the final image quality. At Digital Trends, we've seen all too many cameras that look pretty and have amazing specs, but take crappy photos. We took the Exilim EX-Z77 out on the town and through the countryside for some unbiased testing. What we found was disheartening.

The Ex-Z77 took very nice stills and excellent video when the lighting was perfect. Colors were bright and vibrant, noise was kept to a minimum, and overall image-to-reality comparison felt pretty good. Once we left a properly lit environment, the quality of stills and video dropped like a brick. Stills had more noise than a Rammstein concert and videos rendered dramatic light artifacts and bars. We got these surprising results even with the EX-Z77 set in Fine (top quality) mode.

Because the EX-Z77 is promoted for use with YouTube.com, we tested the YouTube capture mode via the BS screen. Videos taken in YouTube mode were heavily pixellated and choppy. The color quality dropped and the video looked more like it was taken on a cell phone than a $200 Exilim. For sure, the YouTube capture and direct-upload feature (via software, of course) are new to the camera world. After testing the EX-Z77 in YouTube mode, it's safe to say that it'd be better to capture video in standard or high-quality mode, and let YouTube convert the nicer video file for use online.

These test results really caught us off guard, especially after having really positive experiences with earlier Exilim cameras. The EX-Z77 seems to be less robust than it should be. Of course, these tests were overseen by photography nuts who have a keen eye for detail. The average consumer or YouTube user (apparently a strong target consumer market for Casio) may not be as finicky. The likelihood is, however, that consumers will recognize that the EX-Z77 needs some tweaking before it can be considered a truly worthy purchase.

The Casio EX-Z77