Hey, this is Scott of Photography Banzai.
In this video I'm gonna to talk about this odd little
device. It's a Casio EX-FR10. This came out back in 2014. This specific unit I saw
on Amazon randomly looking for different types of action cameras. And this is
actually made in 2015. It was new old-stock for 50 dollars. Looked interesting
enough that I wanted to try it out. Odd thing about this camera is that it
detaches from the commanding unit. And it uses Bluetooth to connect between the
two devices. So you've got the camera unit and then you have the command unit that
does all of the display... Has a touchscreen. Pretty interesting setup. It gives you a
lot of options with filming. There's a button on the side that you press to
detach with their custom.. connection setup. Comes with a lot of accessories
which we can look at...
When I was looking at the specifications for this device. It has a 14 megapixel
1/2.3" backlit sensor, with a 21 millimeter equivalent lens at F/2.8.
Given those specifications it looked interesting enough to pick up. See how it
is. Really get a feel for having two different pieces of one camera. See how
it works with connectivity. See how I can do different angles. Different types of
filming with that really odd setup. With video this device pre-focuses and then
when you're recording video it does not focus at all. That's kind of a positive and
a negative at the same time. Really, the only indication that you've got focus on
your face is that there's a little flower icon, when you're recording video,
to signify that it's focused relatively close. Now, I did some monopod with the
camera unit really extended far. And I actually had it in the close focusing
mode. I didn't realize all of that footage is basically a little blurred
because I had a super extended on a monopod in video mode and it was in that
close focus. Really, the biggest benefit of this device is that extendibility. The
versatility of having the camera away from that command unit.
I did test out to see how far I could get away from the camera device. Still
get a connection. Still have a live view of what's happening with the camera on
the command unit. And it's actually a very nice distance. In the future I could
really see that being very useful for doing unusual types of filming with this
device being able to set the camera up somewhere and move away from it a
relatively good distance.
Yeah, so the back area here makes a difference, but it
is quick to really figure stuff out. So it's back in action. Let's do it again.
So as long as I don't block the signal from the back of the unit, you can see
that it is getting quite a bit further. Oh man!
I don't know if it was working it looked...
It looked, ahh, still frame and it's recording a video.
Oh, there we go!
Now the actual camera unit comes apart from this ring. This is the small size of
the actual camera. It has bluetooth in here. It has a battery. It has the micro SD
card, and a USB connection. Nice thing about these devices that you can power
them through USB, and also charge. Now, if you're trying to power just the camera
unit, you can't charge at the same time. But you can use it with full USB power,
which is good because the internal battery in this one is not super amazing.
Now, I've gone on three different outings with this. And the camera has gone down
to maybe one third of the power left on the first outing. Last outing it actually
had 2/3 of the power still in there as far as I could tell.
The only negative with USB power is that you lose water resistance because the
port covers are open. Biggest issue of this device... If you want to try to use it
for photos. It's just going to decide where it wants to focus. At the very
this camera will show you where it's focusing if you cycle the display modes.
And they'll give you little boxes to show you: Okay, it's focusing in this area.
You're good enough to take a photo at that point. But that's a huge limitation
of this device for photography. It has a time-lapse feature and you can also
record video plus time-lapse photos at the same time. I did try that out. It
worked relatively well, but there's some issues with white balance. I don't know
if setting it to one of the custom white balances would fix that. I didn't try it
out. But when you'd use auto white balance it will potentially give you
some really odd looking photos.
You can connect to the camera directly to a phone. It worked very nicely. It uses
the Wi-Fi instead of the Bluetooth. There are a few Casio apps on the App Store
for the Android phones, and I wasn't really sure which one... But I found it was
the "EXLIM Link" app. Last update was 2015, so it won't be getting any updates
for sure. But it worked just fine on my LG Stylo 3 phone. Vlogging wise, I
think it works relatively decently with the video side. But it does do the auto
exposure of course there's nothing you can do about that.
And there is no focusing once you've got it set and it's recording. With the audio
side, it sounds alright in some situations. But it does easily peak and
of course you can't adjust levels on the audio. There really isn't much in the way
of adjustment. I did see something for the exposure compensation. But you have
to go to the menu to actually do anything with it. So that makes it not
super useful.
Like I said I only a few minutes. Do have the fingerless gloves today.
Have another pair that I could cover my hands with. It isn't too cold, so I think
I work out nicely. Got this EXLIM Casio device going.
Let me pop my action camera out...
I did do a video test with action camera and this device on one setup. So they're
very close to each other. You can basically get the same perspective. You could
see the differences between the two focal lengths with action camera and
this device. See how the stabilization works...
It is an interesting device. I'm definitely going to try to get some use
out of it for my video work. The biggest drawbacks are configurability, settings...
There's very limited settings. You can't even select autofocus point. You can get some
really interesting angles and still frame it properly with the command unit.
But then image quality wise and video quality wise not super great.
It is fun to mess around with if you want something super odd and versatile yet
So that was a Casio EX-FR10. Hope you found this video interesting.
I'm Scott from Photography Banzai.
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