Design

Casio Exilim ZR100 review – Design

Design-wise and the ZR100’s body is a fairly angular construction, though the grip to the front does soften up the camera’s overall look somewhat. It’s not the slimmest of designs either, but then this is going to be inherent in a camera that has a 12.5x optical zoom lens that’s stowed in the camera body when turned off.

Holding the camera is comfortable, though having to slightly arch fingers over the mode dial to the top right can mean the front flash is slightly obstructed by a finger – this isn’t always the case, but the flash isn’t ideally placed (a pop up solution may have been better placed). Also the ZR100’s lens can feel a touch ‘loose’ when extended from the body.

Internal menus are relatively simple to navigate but too many options are embedded within them, plus it’s easy to get ‘kicked out’ back to stage one rather than having a previous menu position save. Some options do take a fair bit of trawling to locate and the d-pad on the rear isn’t especially clearly marked. However this is (in part) for fairly good reason: the left and right of the pad are customisable and can be set to quick-adjust ISO, metering or other settings as you please. Once the camera’s set up how you like it this is a nifty little touch, although no matter what display you select options such as macro don’t visibly show icons on the screen and it can be confusing to understand exactly how the function option has been set. However there is a quick menu control that pops up when pressing the ‘Set’ button, but, again, not all controls are immediately visible or fully listed here which is a bit of a shortcoming.

We’re particularly fond of the DSLR-like mode dial on the camera’s top. It’s well marked out, though may have benefitted from being on the left side of the camera rather than close to the shutter button.

There’s also an ‘HS’ button to control the high speed capture modes and this is located on the top of the camera – it’s good to see this separated from the rest of the settings.