The Exilim Card EX-S500 is one of those digital cameras designed to look good in the hand. It is very thin indeed (its dimensions are 90 x 59 x 16.1mm) and should slip easily into any pocket, where its 115g of weight will hardly be noticed. When you first switch it on, and the lens pops out, it looks ridiculously proportioned in relation to the main body of the camera. Our review model was a rather nice grey colour but there are also white- and red-bodied alternatives.
The raw headline specifications are pretty encouraging: 5 megapixels, 3 x optical zoom (plus 4x digital providing a maximum 12x zoom), MPEG-4 video capture and voice recording. Still images can be shot at resolutions of 2560 x 1920, 2560 x 1712 (3:2 ratio), 2304 x 1728, 2048 x 1536, 1600 x 1200 and 640 x 480 pixels, while video is captured at 640 x 480 (High Quality), 640 x 480 (Normal) and 320 x 240 pixels. You can keep on shooting video until your storage space is full. Interestingly, you can take a still image at the same time as you are shooting a video.
There 8MB of built-in memory and a slot for an SD card. You will need to buy one of these pretty quickly if you want to be able to take anything like a serious number of pictures when out and about as Casio doesn't bundle a card with the camera. The 2.2-inch LCD screen on the back makes framing shots very easy and it's great for sharing newly taken images or movies with others.
Using the camera is easy. While much of the back is occupied by the screen, Casio has still found room for a four-way navigation and selection button, an extra pair of buttons for making menu choices, and five more well labelled buttons.
But for all its stylish looks, good general features and ease of use, one of the most attractive features is the 'Bestshot' system. The camera has 33 pre-configured settings for shooting different types of images. One of the buttons on the back of the camera is dedicated to calling up the selection, with sample images that help describe the function of each setting on offer in a 4 x 3 grid on the huge screen.
The labels indicate best use for these settings; things like scenery, portrait with scenery, candlelight portrait, soft flowing water, splashing water, and so on. You can also add your own settings to the library. This makes the Exilim Card EX-S500 one of the best of the current crop of point-and-shoot cameras.
You get a charge cradle which can be used to dock with a PC and send AV data out to a TV (the slim camera casing really doesn't have room for AV or USB connectors). Carrying this might be a bind at times, but a PC card reader is just as good for transferring data to a computer.
