best camera ever. hands down. the end.

ok where to start. In my opinion this takes amazing quality pictures. lets start there. It has over 30 "scene selection" modes to choose from and they are all very good. it has enough manual features that is plenty for taking pictures of whatever you want. its not a pro used Nikon D50 on any scale, but nonetheless, its still fantasitic.

it comes in different colors (although unless your a cute little girl or a gay or a guy with some balls of steel, i wouldnt choose the orange). personally i love the silver (which is what i chose) because its not radical, but its still enough to catch attention if thats a sideffect your after. The night blue is descent, and the gold reminds me of an old minidisk player i used to have, which isnt bad, just a bit, odd.

it has a very physical feel to it. it EXTREMELY sturdy. it definately looks like something that you can just hold and crush, but its definately the opposite. i like to think that its so compact its just a peice of titanium. with super powers that make it take pictures too.
titanium. thats pretty light. as is this camera. I looked at probably 50 or 60 different cameras around this category over in Singapore, but this one was definately the lightest on that felt sturdy. Canon has one that i forgot the name of thats smaller but i think it feels much less sturdy and would break if i even look at it.
but when i said a very physical feel up there, i meant that the zoom lense vibrates through the whole camera. not in a bad way at all. in fact. i love it. it makes me feel that im actually zooming. unlike many Canons and Sony's out there that have the single glass covering over this tiny whole that "apparently" have a 3x optical zoom (yeah yeah i know i know, they do). With this camera it actually FEELS like im getting result from taking pictures. its hard to explain but its similer to accelorating a car. you feel the engine vibrating, and it just has a sound of "yeah its working" and it just feels right. thats kinda how this is.

and speaking of acceleration and stuff. This thing needs a speed ticket alone. this thing is crazy fast. it starts up and is ready in as little as less than 2 seconds. you take a picture and its ready almost instantly to review it. it takes a second more to take another picture however if you had the flash on. there is basically NO shudder lag at all. It DOES have the little "half" click where you click the shutter button halfway down to focus, then you take the shot, which is what i have to do on almost every other camera ive ever used (aside from the pro ones and semi-pros like the Nikon D70). But i find that you dont need to do that on this.
i guess the only limitation on picture taking speed is that you might want a good quality "high speed" SD memory card. I always thought SD cards were pretty much all the same, just depends on size right? well some cards are faster than others, just meaning that the TIME it takes to SAVE a picture after taking it is lower with a faster card. that being said, if you get a high speed card you will find that you can take pictures virtually instantaneously after taking your picture. and if you think that is fast, try putting the picture size lower and then setting it on rapid fire. "clickclickclickclickclickclickclickclick
clickclickclickclickclickclickclickclickclick
clickclickclickclickclickclickclickclickclick
clickclickclickclickclickclick"

and yeah. but there ARE downsides to this amaaaaazing camera. For instance in Singapore, ive found that many dealers will try to sell you a "referbished" camera as a brand new one. they will totally deny it though. if you want to catch them, you just need to check the serial code ON the camera, and compare it to the serial code ON the warranty. because sometimes they will replace the old warranty with a new copy, and thus IF it breaks 6 months after you buy it and you send it in to get repaired (under its automatic 1 year warranty) they might reply, well, no. your warranty will not cover this. your camera is a year and a half old. which is untrue, but you got ripped off with your warranty.
now that is probably true with ALL electronics in MORE cities than just Singapore, i just felt it was worth noting because i DID catch someone trying to do this.
but now back to the camera. it has batteries that are not AAA (duh) so you arent going to be able to switch them out on a whim when your battery dies. that being said you arent going to easily charge it up either, due to the only inlcuded way of charging your battery, through the camera dock. personally, i have no qualms against this because it hasnt been a hasle yet, but i know many might find this frustrating. im not saying its not portable, because its is, but its just not as easy as a direct battery charger. which im honestly not sure exists for this battery, but i am damn sure that you can PROBABLY find a battery charger for it somewhere if you really have to.
another thing. i have been told by a couple camera dealers (singapore has thousands i swear, been to lucky plaza?) that because of the S600's slim form, the lense that pops out is not hydrolic, like many cameras are. this is powered by a belt system. now ive been told that since they are belts, its possible for them to break, hence the lense not able to move anymore. now that worried me for a moment, but looking around at review, ive only found ONE complaint that their camera's lense stopped going in and out in the S500 (which came out last July). so i personally think its a very small chance that that would happen and if it does, send it in to get fixed under that warranty.

another thing is that the LCD screen is not perfect. its a descent sized 2.2inch which is enough size for me, but you CAN notice indevidual pixels on the screen if you look carefully enough. however its the same on most of the camera LCD's ive looked at and ive found that it actually gets MUCH worse as the screen gets bigger up to the behemoth 3inch screens. Perhaps im saying that because ive been spoiled lately by the iPod 5 gen "video" because it has a remarkable display.

another thought ive had lately but havent looked into is that there is a peripheral out for the iPod that lets you copy your pictures from your digital camera and put them on your iPod. i was just wondering that you know maybe its possible that you can change the settings on your camera to the specifications that the iPod plays (since it plays mpeg4) and load through the card reader and then PLAY your videos on your iPod. NOW I HAVENT TRIED THIS OR LOOKED INTO IT MORE, but its just a thought i had for those who want to use their camera and shoot hours and hours of video.

CNET ASIA lists the Casio Exilim S600 at about 750 Singapore dollars and about 440 american dollars. I say this price is most DEFINATELY worth it. HOWEVER!!! i bought it for a 540 Singapore dollars which is about 330 or so american dollars. I was offered a price of 515 SingDollars and im sure if i kept looking i could have nailed a lower price, but i instead chose to go to a more respectable place and bought it there at a still good deal of 540. yeah its a lot, but its better than 750! now this camera (the S600) is almost the exact same as the earlier version (the S500), minus a little battery power, a single megapixel difference, and one "best shot" feature, and a couple other minor things like color. That being said, the S500 is most likely much cheaper wherever you look. i know where i live it was offered for about $280 american. thats a pretty pretty good deal and id say the extra features aren't worth the higher price of the S600 for a lot of people. So you may just as well go for the EX-S500 and still be as happy.


ok. now that was a LOTT to write and you are probably very thankfull that its almost over. you may ask "WHYY did you wright so much??" Well...i wrote all that because this is a camera that i have FULLLLY enjoyed and i feel that other people deserve to feel that same joy of using this camera. this is my TOP recomendation for almost ANY camera to buy however id still give the S500 a second glance even though i still prefer this one.