LAS VEGAS — Casio today launched a new, sleek Exilim compact camera at CES 2009 which brings the fancy high-speed shooting of previous models to the consumer range. It has the resplendent title of EX-FS10.
Last year Casio EX-F1 and the EX-FH20, the super high speed digicams which threw images at up to 60fps onto the memory card. While they’d also do high-speed video, the point was that the flurry of images taken in one burst would be guaranteed to contain the perfect smile, (or the perfect stupid, embarrassing expression).
The trouble? Big ugly cams. This year, Casio has squeezed this gimmick, which it calls Dynamic Photography,
into a tiny Exilim body. The FS10 runs at at just 30fps, but it does
this at its full resolution. It will also actually slow down the image
on the rear LCD in real-time, giving a rather odd live slo-mo effect.
The other trick is the constantly running buffer mode, somewhat imaginatively called High Speed Technology. When you hit the shutter, frames before and after are captured, allowing you to actually go back in time to before you take the shot. It also lets you pick the sharp image from a burst of blurry low light shots.
There is another rather unusual feature. Shoot a video sequence – the demo involved somebody passing a gift – then shoot a still shot of the background without the subject. The camera automatically cuts out the moving subject, like matting in video production. Then, you can add this blue-screen-style cutout to another background.
The demo showed a hideous, Hallmark-alike e-card, complete with pink cake and cheesy grin. Also, look at this little girl! She’s actually moving on the background, which is itself a curiously photo-accurate rendition of a nearby Vegas hotel.
The quality of the extraction looks pretty good, though. Available March. More details as we get them, along with some close-op product pr0n shots.
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