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This blazing camera from Casio is so fast it may be just a little ahead of its time.
The Casio Exilim EX-Fi is a weird camera-but I say that with a mixture of awe and admiration. And also, I must add, with some serious confusion.
Just whom exactly is this camera for? With the ability to shoot up to 60-yes, 60!-full-resolution 6-megapixel still images per second, sports photographers might be interested in this high-speed machine, right? In fact it makes the once-impressive 10-fps speed of the Canon EOS 1D Mark III look like it's standing still, in comparison, right? Yes and no, as I'll explain later.
What about the paparazzi? In Continuous Flash mode, the EX-F1 can fire its pop-up flash at a blindingly fast speed of 7 frames per second. If you want it to go even faster, it will record up to 6ofps while using a less-powerful built-in LED light. Sounds cool if you're, for instance, tracking Lindsey Lohan as she's running into a club, right? Yes, though there are some major caveats.
And what about videographers? Along with its ability to shoot footage in high-def (1920 × 1080), the EX-F1 has a "high-speed" mode that can capture video at a mind-blowingly fast rate of 1,200 frames per second, giving you a captivating slow-motion movie in which you can see every whisker of a tiger-or a house cat!-twitch and twitter; or every muscle of a basketball player flex and release as he goes up for a jump shot. But how is the quality of the footage? Let's not even go there. These 336 × go-pixel clips are strictly for playing back in a small frame on your computer.
I have to say I haven't seen a camera quite like the EX-F1 before, which uses so much forward-thinking image-capture technology; it is truly in a class by itself. The only question is: What class of photographer will it appeal to?
SPEED DEMON
Since "digicams" like the Casio EX-Fi don't use a physical shutter, they are, theoretically, only constrained by the speed of the processor in the camera, which sends a signal...