Casio's New Exilim Cameras Let You Apply Make-Up to People's Faces

Looks like the digital camera manufacturers are quite keen on rendering Adobe Photoshop obsolete, at least at the mainstream consumer level, since more and more companies are including in their products all sorts of advanced image processing technologies. These technologies are meant to produce very clear images, which require a minimum amount of post-processing, since most of the retouching effects are applied directly by the built-in software of the camera.

And that's exactly the case with the latest three digital cameras from Casio, the new Exilim EX-Z300, EX-Z250 and EX-Z85 model, which provide a large number of in-camera editing options, besides being able to shoot relatively good quality photos.

First of all, it's important to mention that the EX-Z300 and EX-Z250 models are equipped with 10.1 effective megapixel and 9.1 effective megapixel CCD sensors, respectively, as well as a 28mm wide angle, 4X optical zoom lenses, which are capable of zooming from 28mm to 112mm (35mm film camera equivalent). Moreover, the cameras' inherent shaking motion is compensated for by the mechanical movement of the imaging element in the camera, which, combined with the built-in Anti Shake DSP system, helps in reducing the photo blur due to moving subjects by raising the sensitivity of the camera and allowing faster shutter speeds.

As mentioned right from the start, one of the main gimmicks provided by the two devices is represented by the Makeup function, which allows photographers to smooth skin and soften facial shadows caused by sunlight. Users can thus choose to apply such image processing at one of twelve levels, from weak to strong, and can shoot while checking the results of the effects on the LCD monitor.

Besides being able to take high-resolution still photos, the Exilim EX-Z300 can also record movies at a 1280x720 pixel resolution (720p), using the H.264 video standard for maintaining the high level of image quality while keeping the file size at a minimum.

Now, for the EX-Z85. This particular Exilim model is a much more "trendy" product, since we're dealing with a compact, 9.1 effective megapixel camera with 3X optical zoom, which comes in a wide variety of colors and is quite easy to carry around, since it measures just around 89.7mm x 51.7mm x 19.0mm. It also uses the H.264 video format for recording widescreen movies (16:9 aspect) in compressed video files, and includes the already quite popular Face Recognition function.

No idea on the availability and pricing for the time being, but we'll come back with more details as they surface.


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