Casio Exilim EX-Z19 Review

The Casio Exilim EX-Z19 is a 9 megapixel digital camera. It has a 3x optical zoom lens. Taking its lower price into consideration it has a few extra features over other similarly priced models. These include a YouTube upload mode and the ability to fine tune your photos through setting levels of contrast, saturation and sharpness.

The Exilim EX-Z19 is likely to be attractive to anyone who is looking for a cheap, easy to use, pocket sized digital camera.

Outdoor 1 (Medium Zoom)
This is a good start by the Exilim EX-Z19. I can pick out plenty of definition in the brickwork, roof tiles and on the boats too. Glare from the sun is handled well and the colours are about right.

Outdoor 2 (No Zoom)
The quality of this picture is good for such an inexpensive digital camera. Focusing is sharper than a lot of digital cameras manage. In the corners of the shot darkness does start to creep in. This highlights the fact you cannot expect too much from a camera in this price range.

Outdoor 3 (Maximum Zoom)
As with the second outdoor shot this photo is surprisingly sharp. In fact the Exilim EX-Z19 outperforms a lot of more expensive digital cameras. Sharpness does slide as the photo becomes more distant on the right hand side of the shot, but overall the shot is impressive.

Outdoor 4 (Building)
Once again the Exilim EX-Z19 has managed to produce a surprisingly sharp photo and outperform many more expensive rivals in this test. All in all I am very happy with my outdoor scenic type shots.

Outdoor Portrait
The colours and general use of light come together to produce a very good portrait shot. You should not have a problem reeling off pleasing outdoor portraits in decent light.

Indoor Portrait with Flash
The light from the flash has lit up the face, but has not been strong enough to light the photo evenly. There is no problem with sharpness or detail in the shot, apart from where the flash reflects back off the face.

Indoor Portrait without Flash
Despite areas of hair being darker than they should be and darker patches creeping into the corners of the shot, this is a good effort. There is less noise showing in the shot than many cameras manage. This has lead to better definition and levels of detail.

Colours
I think there is now less to choose between different camera brands when it comes to colour. I like the colours produced by the Exilim EX-Z19, but they are not that different to those produced by plenty of other digital cameras.

Macro
This is an area open to improvement. You can't expect to have everything when shopping at the lower end of the market. Casio have set the macro mode to focus from 15cm away from the subject. That is a little distant if you are interested in taking close up shots. My test shot has been cropped for display purposes.

ISO 400 and ISO 1600
Noise levels are not bad at ISO 400 and colours remain true. At ISO 1600 noise has increased significantly as I would have expected them to.

Overall
Taking the price of the Exilim EX-Z19 into account picture quality is very good indeed.

A single shot was a bit slow at 0.49 seconds. Five shots were timed at an average 13.35 seconds. With flash on times extended to 1.19 seconds for a single shot and 19.99 seconds for five.

To turn the camera on and take the first shot took 3.19 seconds. This is a little slower than standard.

You can compare this camera to other models by taking a look at the Shutter Lag Comparison Table.

The Exilim EX-Z19 is a small, unfussy digital camera. It will just about slip into a decent sized pocket. It is available in green, silver, pink, vivid pink and black.

92.5 x 55.0 x 23.2mm

127g

Lithium ion (NP-60). Casio supplies both a battery and charger with the camera. They estimate you should be able to take up to 200 photos between charges.

Casio have built 18.6mb of storage into the Exilim EX-Z19. This is enough for about 7 photos. The Exilim EX-Z19 is compatible with SD and SDHC cards.

Click here to save money on memory cards..

Very GoodCasio digital cameras are amongst the easiest to use.

Options displayed on the right hand side of LCD screen - overall picture quality

LCD screen quality - closer macro mode

Another small and relatively cheap digital camera worth considering is the Olympus FE-20. This Casio model has more features and the two cameras are very closely matched when it comes to picture quality.

I think the Casio Exilim EX-Z19 does a great job as a pocket, snapshot camera. It has a low price tag, but takes a very good snap in most circumstances.

Front View

Back View

Top View

Sample Menu

Although every effort is made to ensure the accuracy of the information on this site, please make sure you double check the feature set and specification at the point of purchase.

Casio Exilim EX-Z19