Home > Consumer Reviews > Casio Z-750 Digital Camera [7.2MP , 3 x Optical] 2.5" LCD

This is my 3rd digital camera (previous Canon 40 and Fujifilm 4700)and I have owned it for 2 weeks and have taken 320 photos so far, many to just test its capability. Here are my thoughts so far...

The indoor photos are excellent, being very sharp and well coloured with or without flash as needed. There is a focus assist lamp which works flawlessly in near total darkness much like the canon.

Outside photos are equally as impressive but I found I needed to reduce the EV setting in auto mode when photographing an object close up reflecting direct sunlight. It would appear too bright and lose colour on any reflections. At a distance this effect goes but close up photography should look stunning. Reducing EV to -0.7 completely removed this effect and brings all the reflected colours back. I have placed the EV adjustment as a shorcut on the cursor keys to easily adjust if needed. This effect clearly shows on the LCD so its not as though you only find out once downloaded!

The LCD is large, bright and very clear and has a hard plastic screen protecting it from knocks, something my previous canon lacked. The camera is made of metal and feels very solid including all buttons and dials.

Video quality is also excellent with 30 frames per second to play with. What sets this apart from the canon and probably most others is the MPEG 4 compression which will give 65 minutes of video at normal compression on a 1GB card. The canon only gave me 8 minutes of equal quality.

A BestShot feature is available where 30 preset scenes are available to choose from including anti shake, flowing water, sunset, portrait, candlelight, sepia, mosaic, kids etc. You can create up to 999 of your own presets too for any specific settings. However, most of the time the camera is left in auto but the presets are fun to use in the right situation.

Other features allow up to a 30 second voice memo to be recorded against each photo and a calendar display which shows 31 days on screen with the last photo taken on any day as a thumbnail reminder. There are shortcut buttons on the side of the camera for single shot/rapid shot and camera resolution change. Also many of the manual settings ie. EV shift, ISO and metering etc can be assigned to the left right buttons on the 4 way cursor key.

I rated 5 stars as I am very impressed overall with the camera and the sensitivity is easily adjusted. For overall features the casio is great value.

Pros:
Bestshot feature.
MPEG 4 video length.
Large screen.
Picture Quality.
Optical viewfinder.
Battery life.

Cons:
No case.
Can be over sensitive in bright sunlight as above.

This camera is well worth considering if you want a fairly flexible friend that will fit comfortably into your pocket/handbag.

Weighing in at 165g complete with Exilim NP-40 battery, you will hardly notice its there.

Unlike some cameras of this size it offers manual control as well as Snapshot - Auto Mode in other cameras, Best Shot - Scene Mode in other cameras, which, unlike the RV41, actually offer a sports setting, and M, manual.

In M you can alter the shutter value manually, and also select Aperture, but, sadly, you are only offered two settings.

There are a range of focus settings, including one that claims to be manual, which I am afraid it is not. It merely offers a box on screen within which the camera will focus. Why you would want to use this instead of Spot is unclear.

Other settings are: Pan - used as default in Movie Mode - Infinity, for scenery, Macro, and Auto.

The Movie Mode is somewhat better than some I have encountered, in that you can alter a lot of the settings as you would for a still shot, including compression, and EV shift. However, you cannot zoom in and out, though if you do hit the zoom button, you will get digital zoom which is quite dreadful!

The stills results are excellent, and in addition to EV overrides you can change Sharpness, Saturation and Contrast by a factor of +/- 2 places. So far I have not felt the need to use them.

The handbook is very poor; you will need to open the pdf file, which runs to 250 pages. (Are we supposed to print it and take out with us?) Fortunately, most of the settings are intuitive - apart from M!

Would I replace this camera if were to get damaged? Yes!

I owned this camera last year and was not completely satisfied with it.

The Pro’s:

Very good build, the screen is lovely and big; I was able to use it in all lighting conditions. All the buttons are well laid out along with the menu system and there are loads of pre sets available if you want to take a quick picture.

Battery life is good. I could fill up a 1GB card before the battery ran out easily.

The Docking station 'idea' is excellent, when I was in a hurry to find the camera I knew exactly were it was, plus the station charges the camera, let's you know when it's done and can connect the camera to your PC via USB. But, if you want to charge the camera, you have to use the docking station, this means lugging it around with you on long journeys or trips which is a bit extra if you ask me.

The camera is very compact but does not feel cheap and even with fat fingers its size does not affect its usability for me.

The movie function should be pointed out as being one of the best, if not the best for a digital camera as it uses Mpeg-4 compression. Believe me, I think only Sony comes close. Forget about what the video looks like on the camera’s LCD which looks good by the way. The test is viewing it on your computer monitor, and it gets five stars every time. Just to note here, most other digital camera manufactures use other methods for capturing video and on playback the video can seem very ‘pixelly’. I bought a Canon PowerShot A620 last year and could not believe how poor the video was compared to the Casio.

The Camera is very responsive, it starts up in no time and even flash recycle times is very quick.

The Con’s

The most important thing for me when deciding on a camera is the quality of the picture, and sorry Casio, the default settings for the camera left the picture too Colour saturated, and too ‘contrasty’. This meant every time I wanted to take a picture I had to reduce these variables which can be done via the menu system. When you switch the camera off and back on, the settings are lost. A lot of the presets suffered this problem, mind you once the settings had been changed the final picture was acceptable.

In poor light the camera had trouble focusing which I genuinely thought was generic for digital camera’s well compact digital cameras anyway. In poor light a lot of the time I would give up taking the picture as the end result was not worth the effort I put in (maybe because I’m not a pro – but even letting friends have a go, taking pictures in poor light still caused problems). The whole point of all the pre-sets is to take out the pro factor anyway. A point to note here is that although the Canon PowerShot mentioned above is a bigger camera, not too big in my opinion, it never suffered when taking pictures in poor light. Something Canon can be commended for.

Summary

For me the camera is a good ‘looker’, solidly built, very compact, excellent video taker, many pre-sets for all types of lighting and movement conditions, but this has it’s drawbacks with having to adjust the colour saturation and contrast all the time. It has the best menu system I have used and a generally good feel. Battery life is good and it comes with a docking station which has it’s good and bad points. All this was weighed up against the quality of the end picture result. Once adjustments were made the pictures were acceptable (not the best mind you), but it depends on what you’re after. If you want an attractive camera this small and this price, there are only a few cameras to compete with it, they may prove better in the picture quality department and struggle less in poor lighting conditions but If you’re not as fussy as me with picture quality (hence the four stars rather than five) then this camera could well be the one for you.

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