Casio Exilim EX-S5 – budget-friendly camera with low features
Thumbs Up:
Casio Exilim EX-S5 has a slim design and comprises good price-to-feature ratio. The photo quality is good like other cameras in this class.
Thumbs Down:
The camera is not good for capturing moving objects, as the shutter lag is long.
The Whiz Kid Speaks:
Casio Exilim EX-S5 is a 10.1-megapixels camera with CCD optical sensor. The supported light sensitivity levels are ISO Auto, ISO 1600, ISO 800, ISO 400, ISO 200, ISO 100 and ISO 64. The maximum shutter speed is 1/2000 second and the minimum speed is 60-second.
The exposure mode is Program and three-exposure metering are Center-weighted, Multi-segment and Spot. The exposure compensation is ±2EV range in 1/3 EV steps. The camera has 4x digital zoom. The white-balance is of three types: Automatic, Presets and Custom. Its presets include Fluorescent light (cool white), Fluorescent light (daylight), Tungsten light, Overcast, Daylight and Shade.
2.7-inch LCD display has a resolution of 114,960 pixels. The digital video format is AVI and MJPEG, and video resolution options are AVI 320×240, AVI 640×480 and AVI 848×480. The still image format is JPEG and image resolution options are JPEG 640×480, JPEG 1600×1200, JPEG 2304×1728, JPEG 3072×2304, JPEG 3648×2048, JPEG 3648×2432 and JPEG 3648×2736.
Casio Exilim EX-S5 has inbuilt flash with four modes: Red-eye reduction, Flash OFF mode, Fill-in mode and Auto mode. The effective flash range is 4-inch to 9.5-ft. Zoom lens has focal length of 6.3mm-18.9mm with an aperture of F/3.1-5.6. The focal length equivalent to 35mm camera is 35.5-106.5 mm. The focus adjustment is Manual and Automatic, and TTL contrast detection is there for Auto-focus. Lens provides 3x optical zoom and motorized-drive zoom adjustment. The lens is aspherical. The camera has built-in lens shield and self-timer delay of 2 seconds and 10 seconds.
The additional features include Digital image rotation, USB 2.0 compatibility, YouTube capture mode, PictBridge support, EXIF Print support, resizing an image, cropping an image, built-in speaker, Date/time stamp, Auto recording, Face detection, Direct print, DPOF support and mono-mode inbuilt microphone.
Casio Exilim EX-S5 has Casio NP-80 lithium ion battery. The EX-S5 has two connectors – 1×composite audio/video output and 1×USB. The camera also has one SD memory card slot. The accessories included in the package are carrying strap, drivers and utilities disc, one USB cable, one A/V cable and battery charger.
Razzle Dazzle:
Casio Exilim EX-S5 measures 2.2-inch tall, 0.7-inch thick and 3.8-inch wide and weighs 3.5 ounces. The EX-S5 comes in purple, blue, black, silver and pink bodies with chrome looks. The camera is stylish, thin and lightweight. The front side works as a fingerprint magnet to capture scratch and finger touch easily.
Inside Dope:
Casio Exilim EX-S5 is capable of producing good photos and they looks nice. It feels well built except for its battery compartment door. The Exilim EX-S5 is easy to use camera with good feature and costs $130. Casio has made the EX-S5 ultra-compact, but its performance is not good and shutter lag is long.
Your thumb will rest between a dedicated Movie button and the right edge of LCD. If you press the Movie mode button once, then it starts the recording. However, if you press it twice, then it stops the recording and takes you to shoot still photos. The Camera Mode and Playback buttons; set button and round directional-pad; Menu and Best Shot (BS) button are located beneath of one-press button.
You can access all the settings through Menu button in Casio Exilim EX-S5. Moreover, for quick access to options, a panel of settings is also located on the right side of LCD screen. You can program the right and left directional to change settings such as exposure compensation, ISO and white balance. There are no quick settings to change focus modes, so you have to change the focus mode through menu system. It is very easy to navigate through all setting options, which include some adjustments for selecting menu color scheme and focus frames. The Exilim EX-S5 has inbuilt support to Eye-Fi SD cards to transfer photos from camera through wireless network connection.
You can easily rely on abundant scene modes provided by Casio’s cameras. Casio Exilim EX-S5 has 22 scene modes that can be accessed with one press of Best Shot (BS) button. These scene modes include For YouTube, For eBay, Soft Flowing Water, Fashion Accessories, Night Scene, Landscape and Portrait. Moreover, there is an Easy Mode in menu options, which locks down all the settings and you can only have basic settings to operate the camera easily. The Auto mode is a Program AE mode that allows you to adjust all settings except shutter speed and aperture. Movie mode is for VGA quality video, but there is no convenient one touch button for recording videos. You cannot use zoom lens feature while recording. In continuous shooting, Casio EX-S5 inherits focus and all the settings from first shot to successive images. The continuous shooting is fast, but it is not useful for moving object.
Casio Exilim EX-S5 has slow performance. It takes 2.5 seconds from power-on to first-shot. The average waiting time between shots is the same 2.5 seconds, whereas it is 3.1 seconds with flash. The camera is good for the persons who do not mind waiting some seconds between shots. The shutter lag in bright condition is 1.2 seconds and it is more in dim light.
Casio Exilim EX-S5 provides good image quality, considering its cost. EX-S5 works fine from ISO 64 to ISO 200, but it does not work fine above ISO 200 with a bit noise. Casio does not give good options to reduce the noise because the light touch resulted pictures to look grainy at high ISO levels but their details were intact. The images are usable up to ISO 1600, but still quality is subjective. We used Tungsten white balance preset that worked fine, whereas Auto white-balance did not work well. Colors are accurate and natural. The exposure is good for the most part, but the clipped highlights are common. There is a little barrel distortion at widest position of lens and few purple fringing is noticeable in high-contrast areas.
We don’t expect a sub-$130 camera to give stellar performance, but Casio Exilim EX-S5 is an exception. The EX-S5 is budget friendly and compact camera with good features. However, we do not recommend Casio Exilim EX-S5 camera for shooting moving objects such as pets, kids and sports because even in bright conditions as the one-second shutter lag is too long for moving objects
Nitty Gritty:
Casio Exilim EX-S5 is a budget friendly and compact camera for the basic usage. The camera is not good to shoot moving object because of its long shutter lag. Overall, we do not recommend the EX-S5 to capture your memorable moments.
