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- Average user rating: 3.5 stars out of 20 reviews Back to product review
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13 out of 14 people found this review helpful
3.5 stars
"CASIO EXZ-850 vs SONY DSC-T30 vs CANON SD700IS"
Pros: Takes good pictures. Looks cool. pretty fast with everything except zoom
Cons: the screen on this thing looks terrible. the zoom is agonizingly slow
Summary: Here is my personal review of the Sony DSC-T30, Canon Powershot SD700IS and the Casio EXZ-850. I will post this review under each product as I have owned and tested all three. If you don?t wish to read a long drawn out review here it is: I liked the Casio the best, the Sony came in Second and the Canon came in third. I arrived at this conclusion by considering 3 main things: 1.picture quality 2.ease of use 3.price. Starting with #1 as much as I wanted to like the other more reputable companies, the Casio continued to surprise/please me. The picture quality right out of the box is great. I needed something to supplement my Nikon D200 when I need to take a quick picture of my daughter, wife, travel destination, etc. Sometimes I don?t have the ability, or energy to haul out my d200 as great and almost perfect as it is. I like my pictures ?hot? and vibrant which the casio delivered with no effort whatsoever. You pull it out, turn it on with one hand and snap away. It was also the fastest of all three. No real lag between turning on , zooming, and shooting. The sony was very slow zooming compared to the casio, and both the sony and the canon required two hand operation, which is hard with a baby in one hand. The sony took very good pictures but not as good as the casio. The canon was a major disappointment for me. It requires too much tweaking to get good pictures. One example of this is my human subjects were coming out looking orange and underexposed. Skin tones were not natural looking and the exposures were boring. When you take it out of auto mode and bump up the exposure, it looks better but not great. When you change the color settings from auto to some of the others, there was always a tradeoff, such as when you go to neutral, it fixed 75% of the skin tone issues, but then added gray to the rest of the colors, just not appealing to the eyes. The one good thing that I can say about the canon is that when you need to crop and zoom in photoshop, the images were SLIGHTLY smoother. But I don?t do much of this except for the purposes of my test. Like I said, for me this camera is just for a quick point and shoot. The Sony picture quality was a close second to the casio and the canon was a distant third from the casio. I did not try video on any of them as I have a sony minidv camera for that. #2 ease of use. The casio wins in all aspects, one handed operation is great. Camera feels great in my small-medium size hands, I liked the idea of the fixed lens on the sony but after actually using all three, I now like the lens that comes out of the body, with the sony, due to the location of the lens, I always felt like I was going to touch the lens glass with my left hand and had to be mindful of not getting my hand too close to the lens as to not affect picture quality. After seeing the prettier looking designs of both the canon and the sony I briefly didn?t like the boxy look of the casio, but now I feel like it makes it easier to hold, even with the curved design of the canon. I also thought I didn?t like the fact that you have to use a docking cradle with the casio, but after fooling with trying to find the holes and cables for both the sony and the canon, not to mention that true to sony fashion, you must use a proprietary cable (and memory stick vs sd), I now like the fact that I just plop the casio in its cradle and push the usb button and it sucks my pictures right in, although I have had quite a few occasions that Photoshop has not been able to capture them without taking it out and re-doing it. I am sure that you could use Microsoft?s built in utility or Casio?s utility with no headache, I am just so used to Photoshop. I will just take an extra memory card on vacation and not worry about viewing them on my laptop at the hotel. One good thing I can say about the sony is that it has 56mb built in memory as a back up to running out or forgetting your stupid memory stick duo. I will not bother giving any positives about the canon because it lost just based on the poor picture quality. and the little door for the usb cable is a pain in the b*** to open. And one more thing about the Canon, IT DOESN?T HAVE A BATTERY MEATER! WHAT KIND OF PEA BRAIN FORGOT OR NEGLECTED TO PUT THAT IN! I am sure it was so that people don?t keep charging the battery before it is dead, so that you can have a longer battery life with each full charge, but this also causes you to have to buy a second battery because you never know if it is going to die when you most need it. So it is either a really good marketing idea on Canons part or a REALLY DUMB idea from a consumer standpoint, either way the customer looses. #3 price. The casio was $100 less and I was able to buy it from one of my favorite retailers COSTCO! Went into a store and they have a kit that comes with a carrying case, and 256 of memory for something like $380. both the sony and the canon cost me about $499.00. Do I need to say anything more. Just put the fact that it is a casio out of your head because they finally made a nice product. Hope this helps cause now I have to go to fed ex to send $1000 worth of cameras back to amazon and costco. Oh yeah and the extra screen size on the sony is worthless because the picture you are trying to frame on from the sony looks terrible. The casio has an excellent screen but a worthless viewfinder. But you will never need it with such a great screen.
- 2 replies to this review
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read ur review, u got to some interesting verdicts. I myself own a canon SD700IS, its not the best, but i was just thinking of swapping it for a Fuji F30. Since you had tried all the other major canidates i was considering, i just thought to see what your opinion of it was.
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I read that you did not try out the video function. If you had you would have changed your review. I friend has returned two Casios that had issues with the video function. Read some of the reviews here on Cnet and they say the same thing. Not to mention the only way to charge and transfer files is with their docking station. So much for vacations or transfering pictures at a friends/family members' houses without removing the memory card and hoping they have a reader or you brought yours. Casio? No thank you!!!
Where to buy
Sony Cyber Shot DSC-T30 (silver):
$435.00
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Amazon.com Marketplace
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$435.00 | Yes |
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