There are fancier camperas with more features. There are slicker-looking cameras. They are all big. This camera can hide under a credit card yet it takes fabulous pix and even avi video. The software is even adequate for manipulating photos although an Adobe Photo package makes this camera come to life. Load it up with memory, crank the resolution and sharpness to max and go on a shooting spree with this camera. I used one for five days including video shoots, playback and lots of start/stop and the battery still shows a full charge. It's simply amazing for its size. Yes there are better cameras which cost more and are the size of a Nikon F3 but for a tiny camera, this one rocks.

The camera took fine pics for the 1 month I had it. The lense cover stopped functioning, so I sent it for repair to Casio under the warranty. After 40 days I still have not received it, missing two major trips abroad. Casio officialy does not know when I am gonna have it, because they are still waiting for the parts from Japan!!!!! They are not replacing it either.
Don't take the risk...I have read similar reviews in other websites about the Exilim models.

I have never owned a better camera. I was delighted by the design and performance of the exilim. Only one issue, that of the birghtness of the screen in dark situations, pales in comparison to the speed, battery life and overall quality. I wanted a compact, high quality, functionally superior camera - the exilim is all that an more. I just love it.

I hate to sound like one of those grumpy guys who says "this camera is no better than the brand XX I bought 3 years ago" but it's true! I REALLY wanted to like this camera for all it's nifty features, but at the end of the day, picture quality was no better (and sometimes worse) than my old 3mp sony cybershot p7. Here's the scoop

Pros:
1. Great size/ body. Looks awesome and feels solid. Nice grip placement.
2. Menu system is the BEST I have ever seen. REally intuitive, easy to get to all the settings.
3. 23 shooting modes! And there is an example for each, you don't have to memorize what all the cryptic symbols mean
4. Start up is very fast. This is where the casio kicks butt over my old camera.
4. DECENT photo quality, but...

Cons:
1. ... Picture quality is simply not as good as my 3mp Sony. I tried every setting there is and took lots of comparison photos... day, night, macro, magnifying, using different sizes and enhancing them. Bottom line: more noise and less sharpness with the Casio. It's more megapixels, it should be sharper, no? I have no explanation.
2. LCD is big, but it is VERY grainy in low lighting conditions. Embarassing. My sony has a smaller screen, but it's not snowing all the time.

For me, the picture quality is the deciding factor. For others, it might not matter... The Casio certainly takes VERY decent photos, and I can't see how anyone could give it a "poor" rating. But I'll stick with my beat up sony, thanks!

Today I bought this camera (z50) from compusa and going to return it tomorrow, I have Sony 1.1 MP but still it gives good pic quality compare to Casio z50 5.0 MP. I am completely unhappy with this camera,I don't know why they have made such camera, It seems QC dept forgot to test in low light (evening, night) mode, The LCD diplay is very noisy in low light mode.
If you buy this camera you must compare pic quality with Sony Cyber shot or Kodak easy share.

This camera rocks the house! It's small and takes great photos. The battery life is long. It's not complicated to use. It's not heavy. The pictures look good and are in focus! BUY THIS CAMERA!

I bought this camera at a circuit city store after a very knowledgeable worker there recomended this for me. He said that casio makes the best compact cameras right now, but after having this for more than a month, I'm not so sure. I love all the features on this camera, but the photo quality isn't great. I was taking some pictures of scenery in the car one day going to New York and the pictures are flawless. Same with all of my outside pictures. Great color and sharpness and I was very pleased. Taking some pictures inside the dark Baseball of Fame, though, was slightly different. In the dark, the pictures have an extremely high noise level and if the room is only reasonably lighted, your picture will be horrible without flash. My problems really started after the Baseball Hall of Fame trip, though. The pictures I took there were pretty good and I don't complain about them, but one day, I took it and started taking pictures and everything was wrong. All of the pictures looked extremely whitewashed and unclear. I resetted all features and nothing. I was going to go return it today (and probably exchange it for another camera) but when I tested it to double check, they seemed much better. This isn't a problem that I want to deal with in the future though, and I'm still making up my mind about whether to return it or not. I porbably wouldn't reccoment this camera.

Well, I've been buying at Amazon for years and this is my first review. I had to speak up because it's important.

I've been considering the Casio Exilim EX-Zxx line for a couple of months. I did my due diliegence at all the usual places: Cnet, KenRockwell.com, DPreview, Steves-Digicams, PCMag, etc. I poured over user reviews. I bought the EX-Z50. My God, what a massive, massive dissapointment!!!!

Let me first say that I am no amateur with digicams or 35mm photography for that matter. I've been an avid hobbyist for nearly 20 years. I've been in the digital mix for 5 now. I shoot primarilly Nikon D70. Like another comment here, I was also looking for a super portable pocket-cam when not wanting to tote the big rig.

The GOOD: The EX-Z50 is fantastically cute, solid feeling, feature filled, and has good pricing. It's easy for my novice wife to pick the thing up and start using it with little instruction. The screen is excellent. The controls are above par. As Ken Rockwell mentions, the Exilim line seems to have been designed by real photogs with features such as easy White-Balance and intuitive menus. The unit starts up really quickly. The focus is relatively fast for a point-and-shoot. Shutter lag is very slight - excellent performance. Did I mention this thing is small and cute? Great design.

The BAD: And most importantly... the picture quality is beyond HORRIBLE!!!! Severe barreling at anything past 50% telephoto. Purple fringing all over the place. But my biggest gripe is the MASSIVE, MASSIVE, GRAININESS in nearly every single picture in every single setting. Imagine a cheap 110mm camera using ISO800 file all time. It is compleltely unacceptable at any ISO setting on the Casio. Perhaps I'm spoiled by the stellar D70 performance. But this is downright bad. I am shocked. I implore Casio to take a hard look at their digicams before trying to pass them off in the public domain as good cameras. This is a serious emabrassment. I am returning my unit and reviewing others.

I bought this camera and it broke 3 weeks later. I'm so glad I spent 6 bucks on the warranty and got my money back. Now i'll go out and buy a real camera. I was living in the dark ages and never bought a digital camera. I broke down on the morning that I was leaving for a weekend trip and headed around the corner to Radio Shack to zip in and oout with a new camera. This one SEEMED like it was exactly what I needed so I was satisfied at first. In and out in 10 minuted. I took it with me and was disgusted. Focus is terrible. God forbid you want to take an action picture or a picture with low light. All you'll get is a blurry, grainy mess. Anyway, one day I simply hit the power button to turn the camera off, and it completely froze, for good. Nothing. Took it back to Radio Shack, got my money back, and I'm gonna buy someting that's actually worth $300. Well, at least I got to use a camera that weekend for free. Don't buy this camera.

This camera is not only a piece of crap, but it is actually faulty. Mine, like Phil the Dude, also broke on me in the exact same circumstances, ie I turned it off after two months of use and it never started again. Unfortunately, I was not lucky enough to have the shop warranty and Casio refused to repair the camera, claiming that I had damaged it personally. I am now in battle with this terrible manufacturer to have my camera repaired under the twelve month warranty the camera was sold under.

The Z50 has an instantaneous startup time and the docking station is kinda cool. It's pocket-sized with a nice size LCD, though not as big as the cybershot T1. The snapshot feature seems to work the best because it doesn't manipulate/distort the image as much as the "best shot" feature, an ironic name for such BS camera modes.

The categories for "best shot" are way too specific: Children, Fireworks, Flowers, Collection, Food, ect. I don't take enough picture of food to have a specific setting on my camera for that. The categories should have been like: indoor, outdoor, action, slow shutter-speed and stuff like that - keep it general. I find myself taking multiple pictures of the same thing in different camera modes because I don't know which ones will turn out crappy. Portraits and coupling shots are actually designed to blur the background, but the camera rarely distinguishes the foreground from the background correctly.

If you can find the right picture mode for your shots, the camera can be worth the price.

I probably wouldn't buy this camera again. But I wouldn't discourage others from trying it.

I just bought this camera recently and it is incredible. It takes superior quality pictures inside and out, and is so small you can easily carry it in the smallest purse or your pocket. I love how it has the "BESTSHOT" feature where you can choose many preset photo option such as a coupling shot where you can combine two pictures into one and create 'twins' and two headed people. Also, it has 3 settings for the quality of the pictures and even the "economy" setting takes incredible shots. I have gotten so many compliments on this camera its not even funny. people come up to me all the time and ask where i got that kind of money to buy an $800. camera and they are in shock when i tell them it was only about $300. or so. This camera is worth every single penny...don't even bother to compare to other cameras because i'm telling you now, this camera is the best you'll ever find, anywhere!!

Strengths: Excellent pictures with outside lighting

Weaknesses: Red Eye reduction doesn't seem to work at all. Night photos of fireworks didn't work well even when using that setting. Any pics you take inside with low lighting are very grainy. Nice size camera for a woman~~too small for a mans hands.

Summary: I've had the camera for 8 months now and was very satisfied with any of the outside pictures or pictures that had a great deal of lighting around to compensate for the basic lack of a flash ~ the flash doesn't really help unless you are on top of the subject. Inside pics in dimly lit areas are very very grainy and I have tried every setting to improve them with absolutely no luck. The camera comes with different settings, but even when I put the camera on the firework setting all of the fireworks came out blurry. The size of the camera is great for a woman with small hands but is awkward for a mans larger hands. The casing is very flimsy and was dented when accidently dropped about 4 ft from the ground (height you would hold a camera at while taking a pic) while my husband was taking a pic of my daughter. The lens which protrudes while taking a pic would also no longer retract into the camera with this very small accident. BEWARE ~~ if you drop the camera plan on buying a new one. Casio charged me a FLAT FEE of $200 plus other small fees. Total charge to repair camera $220.43. I requested that the camera be sent back without repairs so they couldn't reuse my perfectly good lens or reuse the battery or any other good parts and there is a shipping fee to return the camera. By the way, a new camera from many dealers on-line costs somewhere between $229 and $259.

As stated earlier the camera works very well in good lighting situations ~~ poorly in dimly lit situations. The only reason that I would not consider purchasing this camera again is due to the unfortunate way that Casio sticks you with a super high repair bill.

This is a slim, easy to carry and use camera. Memory, resolution and zoom is more than acceptable for casual user. Battery life is perfect. SD memory type fits the slot I have in my Toshiba Laptop, but I never had to take the SD memory-stick out because the docking station is a breeze to use.
Super Fast Startup and battery life are the main plus. Do not buy a digital camara that uses AA or AAA batteries, is a waste of money. You dont have to worry about this with the Casio Exilim.

I was especially excited about receiving this camera. I had looked for a digital camera for some time and loved the compact size and large screen that this one provided. I had it for about 8 months when I went on my honeymoon in Hawaii. I had not used it for that amount of consecutive time prior to this trip but of course was taking many shots of the scenery. The camera started malfunctioning and locking up and not saving the picture that it locked up on. This of course happened at very inopportune times and had to be reset many times as well, sometimes effectively and sometimes not. I would say buyer be scared, especially if you are planning to use it a lot for one type of important event. It probably was worth spending more money and getting a better name brand. The size of the lcd screen is great, however the quality of the pictures could be better. Although you can change the picture quality size, a size for normal pictures that you would get is not included such as 4x6 and 8x10. It does have a 5x7 size though.

Tons of features, good battery life, slim but very functional packaging. The only downside I have found so far is that the instruction manual doesn't provide much information on the myriad of features - disapointing to have all the bells and whistles and not have the supporting information to go with them. All in all though, this camera is simply wonderful and has met all my performance expectations and needs.

I love this camera. Easy to use and understand. Has a long battery life. Very little lag time between pictures. Its a great little camera. I have one and just purchased one for my granddaughter. Very fast shipping. Ordered it Sunday evening, and had it Tues. afternoon.

This camera has almost same feature that EX-Z57 has with a difference of LCD size. Price? slight cheaper than Z57.
The comact size of this camera is good for carry and the cradle and software are convenience for saving files to computer. It organizes your picture files with web based files. So, as like other casio model, if you burn picture CD, anyone can browse your pictures with internet explorer without any other software.
So far, it looks good but it has severe problem on picture quality. I can not believed that it has 5 mega pixcel.
Pictures have taken in bright place or under the sun light are so so. However, pictures taken at inside under normal living light are horrible. The noise of pictures from this camera just like as from 30$ valued Webcam.
Someone may say " Hey guy, it's just a compact camera. What do you expect". Indeed, I didn't expect good quality too. However, it is worse than that. Over ISO 200, it is impossible to get normal picture.
I decided to return it because it also had bad pixcels on CCD.
Thanks bad pixcels. Otherwise I had to loose some money for returning of this crap.

I strongly don't recommend to buy this camera and EX-Z57. Maybe, other compact camera, such as F10, Fx8 or Optio-SV may be a better choice with similar price.
better choice than this.

I just returned the camera after 2 weeks of trying to get the settings to make the picture quality better. In daylight the quality is OK at best, but under low light conditions it was terrible. I'm really down on Casio after this experience, but the reviews on the other models give me some hope. I am looking at the Pentax model now.
The size and options are great on this, but that did not compensate for the dismal picture quality.

This product is GREAT! Samlll size but all the features of a larger camera, and the price at Amazon can not be BEAT!

No wonder NIkon announced they are no londer making "film camera's", this was a gift for my daughter who wanted a small camera, I did the techincal review and this is the "camera".

Every family should own at least one!
Things just keep getting better.

A Best Buy here at Amazon, only regret they did not carry the camera in other colors, such as some other retailers did.

I bought this camera in 2005 and liked it so much that I purchased an additional camera for my husband for his business. I like the larger screen, it was easy to learn to use and the pictures come out great. My only complaint is that if its dark its hard to see the screen when taking the picture. You do have to use a docking station but if we travel we can both bring our cameras and just one docking station.Make sure you buy a Sandisk digital card for storage- 256 should be fine holds 80-100 pictures. Overall I am thrilled with the camera.

Although I'm not the best photogragher...this camera is amazing to use and produces very clear vivid digital pictures and is a pleasure to use. The compact look makes for easy traveling convenience. I love it!

I'm very pleased with this camera. Had a lot of features, the res. is excelent and is very small and light.

It's a great camera that will beat any 5MP in the Market; except maybe Sony Cybershot. But I only paid $175.00 for it. I think it's worth the price.

I was upgrading from a tiny 3.1 megapixel, credit card size, and liked the idea of a camera with a docking station. It takes minutes to download 50 ++ pictures. It is very, very easy to use. I have taken this small camera everywhere; Italy, Switzerland and France, and my own backyard. This camera has made me a better photographer(see images). It has performed perfectly for me and the only assesory I've purchased is a bigger memory card (1 gig) for $29.00. It is so small, I keep it in my purse most of the time.
Sure, you'll need a larger camera for telephoto, and wide angle but for the size, this packs a punch.
BUY IT! You will not be dissapointed.

I purchased this camera after deciding to upgrade from my 3.2 megapixel sony cybershot. I was an inexperienced digicam buyer, as the first one had been a gift, and thought it best to purchase at a photography store. While in the store, I noticed the excess of noise on the LCD screen, which I had never experienced with my Sony. I, nonetheless, purchased it anyway after the test photos I snapped appeared to be clear on the LCD screen. I used the camera the next day at the aquarium and was very displeased to see that the majority of my photos were grainy, and those which had acceptable quality were only the photos that I had snapped at close range.

I kept the camera figuring that I was not accustomed to the features and was therefore using the incorrect settings to get the picture quality I wanted but, at every setting, I got the same result. Even the pictures taken at "fine" setting were grainy. The camera's performance was abysmal in low-light situations, something that my 3.2mp Sony always seemed to adjust wonderfully to. Almost every low light photo I've taken with this camera has been soft and blurry. Amazingly, the photos taken in situations where all lights were turned off using only flash assist were pretty clearly defined.

In the end, I found that I got the best results (and print quality) when I took very large photos at ISO 50 and then resized them to be smaller on my PC. Shrunken photos were actually very useable.

There are some pros to this camera, despite its many shortcomings:

1. It is very compact. I loved having a camera that fit nicely into my pockets or purse for those situations when I wanted to get a shot here or there but did not want to have a bulky camera in tow.

2. The battery life is amazing. There were days when I snapped literally hundreds of photos before losing power. The change from the 50 photo battery life of my Sony was a nice improvement.

3. The quality of the video mode is better than I expected, and the videos are already in web format which makes them easier for sharing.

4. The camera dock not only makes uploading photos to your computer a dream, but saves you money on batteries.

My overall opinion: If you are looking for a camera to just have fun with, maybe share a few pics on the web, then this is great.
If you are looking for a camera to shoot important events, vacations, parties, etc, don't get this one.

CASIO IS EXTREMELY HESITANT TO PROVIDE WARRANTY SERVICE. CAMERA WAS MAILED IN OCT 25 FOR WARRANTY SERVICE. PLAYED TELEPHONE TAG WITH SERVICE DEPARTMENT FOR 8 WEEKS AND FINALY GOT WORD THAT CAMERA WAS ACCCEPTED FOR WARRANTY SERVICE AND WAS BEING TURNED OVER TO MAINTENANCE AND I "SHOULD" RECEIVE CAMERA IN APPROX TEN DAYS. THE KEY WORD BEING "SHOULD". I AM NOT GETTING ALL EXCITED JUST YET. . AS MUCH AS I LIKE THE CAMERA I DEFINTELY WOULD NOT BUY ANOTHER CASIO JUST BECAUSE OF THE BAD CUSTOMER SERVICE ASPECT.

I have been exceptionally successful taking some beautiful outdoor shots with this camera. Well-lit indoor shots also turn out well, but I've had some trouble getting darker photos to look good. I don't know whether the flash is weaker than other comparable cameras, but I feel as if the indoor photos some of my friends take are more impressive than mine. As nice as it is to have all of the available pre-set "scenes", I don't feel that the night settings work without a tripod to hold the camera absolutely still.

The sound recorded by this camera is of understandably-mediocre quality, and the same can probably be said for the video. One other potential issue: the documentation that comes with the camera is pretty poor, so you may feel the need to look online for instructions on how to use more advanced features (especially if you haven't had another modern digital camera). All told, the camera was probably a bit overpriced when I bought it 1-1/2 years ago, but it's been fun. I've taken ~1200 pictures with it (although not nearly all of them were good), and I expect to take thousands more.

After 700 pictures this camera's electronics failed while on vacation in Europe. After returning to the US, I contacted Casio and sent it in for service. Repair was more than I paid for the camera...thus I am looking for something not made in China. Good luck.