The Vanity Camera
Oh, you're so vain. If looking good with your camera is more important than getting the best possible picture quality, choose a model whose sleek design makes a fashion statement. These thin units are very lightweight and comfortable to carry in a pocket.
Casio Exilim EX-Z57
Price: $380
Photograph: Robert CardinThe thinnest of digital cameras can be just as fashionable as a fancy mobile phone or an IPod. Take the ultraslim Casio Exilim EX-Z57, which shoots at 5 megapixels. Weighing just 5.2 ounces, it's light enough to carry comfortably in a shirt pocket. And its stylish alloy body is sure to turn heads, especially when the 3X zoom lens pops out of its extremely thin chassis.
The big, 2.7-inch LCD fills the back of the camera, scarcely leaving room for the controls. You use the LCD both to frame your shots (there's no optical viewfinder) and to show off your snaps to others.
Even at rest, the EX-Z57 looks sexy. It can play a slide show while sitting in the included cradle and charging its batteries. Touching a button on the cradle transfers new photos to your PC, and you can even set it to generate album pages from the camera to your Web site. The EX-Z57 has 23 scene modes for subjects from food to fireworks.
As is typical for such a small camera, though, image quality was mediocre on most of the shots in our tests. Its outdoor images, however, earned higher marks than the output of most other cameras here. There are six settings for white balance under various lighting conditions.
Click here for more on this camera.
Ad Choices