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1000fps, HD video, AND 9 megapixel stills!!!

I purchased this camera from Best Buy on Thursday, and have shot over 30GB worth of photos and videos with it in just 4 days.

The highlights: This camera has every shooting mode under the sun. It will shoot 9 megapixel stills, up to 7 megapixel stills at the incredibly fast rate of 40fps, HD 720p video, and slow motion video ranging from 30-1000fps. It also has a 20x zoom (although I find the zoom to be only slightly longer than my Canon S3 IS “12x zoom”, but the wide angle is much wider).

The camera is very easy to setup and use, although I am still trying to figure out some of the more advanced features (like the ability for the camera to automatically take photos when an object enters the frame).

Image quality is pretty good, about the same as my Canon S3 IS. It does much deeper blues and reds than the Canon, and doesn’t have as bad chromatic aberration, but it’s greens are a little too blue for my taste, and the off-whites need some more yellow. Noise isn’t as high as I expected, but do realize this is not a DSLR, it’s a small lens and a small sensor.

Lighting seems to be key with this camera. In direct sunlight, it takes amazing photos and videos, but in low-light, the high speed videos begin to suffer. I haven’t had any that I took under normal lighting conditions come out unusable, but a few that I took in a very dim office nearly are.

My only complaints are minor, but here they are:
When shooting video, even with continuous AF off, it will still occasionally try to refocus, I find this very annoying
I cannot seem to find the settings to turn on move-in CS (motion-sensor triggers the camera)
While the latest firmware drastically improved write speeds for video, shooting single stills seems to take a long time to write to my class 6 memory card
I really don’t like the proprietary USB connection, it is very difficult to find the right angle to get it to plug in because it’s so narrow

Pleasant surprises:
Unlike the S3 IS, it remembers your photo and video settings very well, and if you set photos to manual focus and then want to take a video, the video will “pick up” that setting as well
The big 3″ screen on the back is beautiful, with the Canon I mostly used the viewfinder, not so with the Casio
Startup time is faster than I expected based on other reviews, from power on to first shot isn’t noticeably longer than the S3 IS
The flash is very bright and VERY fast, up to 5fps
Editing videos on the camera is ridiculously easy, hands down the best video editing GUI I’ve seen on a camera, makes it very easy to just keep the part of the video you want
Build quality is very good, I especially like the rubberized grip, it’s much more secure than the Canon, and easier to hold despite it’s heavier weight

I’ll post a further review after I’ve spent some more time with it, and hopefully a few of my little quibbles will be fixed in upcoming firmware.

Update (2/8/2012): This item is currently on sale here for the lowest price I’ve seen. I also found some auctions for this item here.

The featured review for this product, Casio Exilim EX-FH20 9.1 MP Digital Camera with 20x Optical Zoom and 3-Inch LCD Black Electronics, was written by Elizabeth Matzelle.

The average rating for this item is 4.3 out of 5 stars, according to 3 reviews.