Casio Unveils Hyperbolically Fast Digital Cameras at CES

Remember when the digital camera market went through the megapixel wars? When every company was racing to come out with a sensor that could cram more pixels into an image? Well now that people realize they probably just don’t need 56 MP in their everyday lives, camera companies have started to look for other ways to differentiate themselves. Many are turning to video and HD recording, but Casio’s offerings at the CES booth show that they might be trying to start a new war: the speed war.

Everything that Casio is doing with cameras has to do with getting more speed into regular consumer cameras. A year ago, they released the F1, a high-end camera that could shoot 60 frames per second (to put that into perspective, most TV programs display at 24 fps). Then a few months ago, a mid-level camera came out, aimed at a prosumer market with 40 fps. But at CES, Casio unveiled the next step in their speed crusade: bringing high fps rates to the small point-and-shoot cameras.

Casio unveiled the FC100 which has a high speed burst mode that can shoot 30 fps, and take high-definition, 720p video. In fact, it can shoot video at 1000 fps, which starts to sound as absurd as making 56 MP point-and-shoot. Nevertheless, Casio has packaged all this into a thin form factor with 5x optical zoom. Not bad, even if the $400 price tag is pretty expensive for a point-and-shoot. But ultimately, Casio really is just aiming to wow the crowds instead of offer practical and affordable cameras. Yes, you will be able to capture that exact moment you're looking for, but you’ll also have 29 other worthless images.

While the speed advancements are pretty awe-inspiring, the really intriguing development at the Casio booth was the Exilim Dynamic Photo demonstration. This new technology allows you to take “moving pictures” (using the amazing shooting speed of the Exilim line) and superimpose that image on a static background. For instance, I can create an “image” where I appear to run across the countryside…in a painting. You simply take shots of whatever action you want, then take a picture of the background and the camera does all the rest, without the need of photo editing software. Obviously, you’ll want to do your acting in good lighting and in front of a fairly uniform background so the camera will be able to differentiate between you and the background when it cuts you out. But it really does work well, and Casio had a bunch of useful ways to use this technology.

There is one (extremely) major drawback: The cameras use a proprietary image format to make this composition. So you need Casio’s special software to view it. This severely limits the usefulness of this feature. What good is it if I want to send it to someone that doesn’t have the Casio software? This feature won’t gain a lot of favor with consumers until Casio makes the technology more compatible or the company somehow integrates the file format into the rest of our electronics.

Don’t hold your breath.

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