With Casio’s long pedigree, it’s no surprise that the Casio Exilim EX-Z50 is a well-designed, well-made and well-specified camera. It has an all-metal body, an ultra-compact Pentax Sliding Lens System 3x optical zoom, and a high definition 2.0in TFT LCD monitor with 84,960 pixels. The overall style is generally similar to some of the cameras in Pentax’s Optio range, as is the range of features on offer. However, the similarities are only skin deep.
From a standing start the EX-Z50 starts up in a little over two seconds, which is half a second faster than the Pentax Optio S5i, arguably its closest rival. Shot-to-shot time in the highest quality setting is a respectable three seconds using a standard Lexar 128MB SD card, and is slightly faster at lower quality settings. However, the camera has no continuous shooting mode, so this is as fast as it gets. Using the flash will slow things down somewhat, since in Auto or Flash On modes the camera will sensibly refuse to fire until the flash is fully charged.