New Ceramic Lensed Exilim Ex-S100

stuart miles writes "pocket-lint has managed to be the first to review the new ex-s100 3mega pixel from Casio that uses a ceramic lens rather than the standard glass version. "

Comments

This is bad?

[stilist]

Since when is a 3.2 megapixel size bad, especially for a small digital camera? Guess I'm just behind the times...

Re:This is bad?

[Anonymous Coward]

I don't understand this either:

"The bad:

Only 3.2 megapixels, no SD card in the box"

No SD card in the box is a GOOD thing, who uses wimpy 8-16MB cards that come with the camera? SInce the Casio Exilim line has builtin memory (10-20MB), there is no sense in including small SD card.

Re:This is bad?

[Technician]

Since when is a 3.2 megapixel size bad, especially for a small digital camera?

My biggest beef with this camera is the battery choice. Re-chargable batteries self discharge. When I need shots, I need to grab and go. Expensive batteries that may or may not be ready to go are not an option for me. This camera takes a Li-ion battery. This means, dead camera at unexpected times, insufficient capacity for the birthday party, parade, sporting event, wedding, Burning Man weekend, etc. I'll take a slightly larger camera if I can use off the shelf batteries in a pinch as needed. I have several cameras. Any of them that can't share memory cards and batteries have been replaced. The type of battery and type of memory are the two things that are as important to a camera now as pixel count, low light, size and zoom range. If any of the requried features are lacking, I can't use it. When I go to shoot something, I take one or both of the cameras, the memory cards, 2 sets of NiMH batteries and a new pack of Alkalines, more if it's expected to be a big shoot. If the rechargables are dead, then I don't have a dead camera. If they are good, then I don't need the alkalines this time. I can't do this in an affordable way with a camera that uses a propritory battery. I can buy at least 4 sets of rechargable batteries for my camera for about the price of one propritory battery. Li-ion batteries are usualy $40 and up each. This significantly adds to the cost of ownership if you plan on having enought battery power to cover all the various needs. This is especialy true if you can't use off the shelf batteries in a pinch as needed.

Re:This is bad?

[LtOcelot]

Under 5 MP "barely acceptible" onscreen? What resolution is your monitor, 2560x1920? Somebody better tell Nikon to recall the D2H. If you're not getting excellent onscreen images and 300 dpi 4x6 prints out of 3 MP, it's not the megapixel count that's the problem.

Re:This is bad?

[IamNotWitchboy]

That's the whole point. It makes no sense to include a tiny SD card with the camera that almost no one uses and it only serves to drive the price up.

Re:This is bad?

[mrsev]

There is one thing that most people forget is that there are huge variations in the amount of power stored in rechargable batteries. You need to look on the side to see how many mAh (milli Amp hours) the can store. For the AA size this can vary from 800 to 2300. I had a set of 1200mAh batteries and they would die after 30 shots on my Canon A20 camera. I switched to 2300mAh batteries (that cost much more) and now I can shoot more than 300 shots with the display on, without problems. Expect to pay around 15 EURO for 4 AA 2300mAh batteries.

Re:This is bad?

[wizrd_nml]

I've had the exact opposite experience. Because of their memory effect, NiMH are the most inconvenient batteries to use. You have to spend about 24 hours prior to using the camera to discharge and rechard them to make sure you have the maximum charge.

No thanks, I'll take a couple of Li-ion any day. Just plug them in a few hours before I intend to shoot and off I go. One Li-ion generally lets me take about 90 photos at 3.2 megapixel resolution, with a bit more than half using flash (Casio has pushed that limit even further with their Z3 and Z4 models, I believe over 200 photos with one charge). And if you're planning on taking more than 150 photos for an event, generally speaking you're probably looking for more than a compact (digital SLR maybe?).

Re:This is bad?

[RedBear]

Typical viewpoint. Everyone else in the world != you.

NiMH AA rechargeables self-discharge much more quickly than Li-Ion, and as you point out they take up more space for the same amount of power. You don't like the camera? Fine, don't buy it. Yay, free market capitalism. But many people are just casual camera users. For them it often makes sense to have a very compact camera that doesn't have batteries that need to be topped off once a week and treated gingerly. Yeah, you can buy some alkalines in a pinch, but that soon gets to be more expensive than just buying another proprietary Li-Ion and recharging it every other month. It's a self-contained solution that for the casual user ends up being a lot simpler to deal with than sets of loose NiMH AAs.

For people like you who use multiple cameras it may make some sense to make sure they all use interchangeable parts, but for most of the rest of us the Li-Ion actually makes some sense, despite the prices. Either way they are immensely cheaper than alkalines in the long run. Have you thought about getting an external Li-Ion powerpack? With those it doesn't matter what type of battery your cameras take as long as you have the proper power connector. Lasts forever too. Check out the DPS-9000 power pack, it screws to the tripod socket so you don't have to mess with a cable running to a belt pack. Great solution if you need to shoot all day.

Re:This is bad?

[RedBear]

3 megapixels is "bad" if you ever want to print your photos larger than 8x10. We've had 5MP cameras since 2001 (Minolta Dimage 7 was the first, I think). There are currently many compact cameras with 4-5MP chips, and a new crop with a 7MP chip although they aren't quite compact. So having a new camera come out with "just" 3.2MP isn't too impressive.

Going up just one step there is a group of prosumer cameras with an 8MP chip that have all been out for several months. 8MP will give you the ability to stretch your photo to 16x20 and still have impressive resolution on the paper, thus rivaling the enlargement ability of your typical 35mm consumer film camera. So from the quality perspective a 3MP camera is still sort of a toy unless you'll never print anything but 4x6 snapshots and a few 8x10s. It's only within the last 18 months or so that consumer and prosumer digital cameras have really started to cross the hump and become as good or better than film for most common purposes. 3MP just doesn't cut it if you want quality anywhere close to film.

Re:This is bad?

[inflex]

My other hobby other than listening to trash on /. is model aircraft - specifically electric powered ones.

Li-Ion batteries have the lowest discharge rate around, superior to NiMH and definately NiCd. Better yet would be Li-Poly but they're still a tad risky for some people's likings (I have videos of model planes bursting into flames due to a bad lipo).

The trouble with Li-Ion/Poly is that they have a comparitavely low draw capacity on demand, especially if they're cold. This is where a lot of people pick up the feeling that Li-based batteries are a poor choice relative to NiMh/Cd. Typically if the battery cannot supply the required current the apparent voltage drops and it seems like the battery is 'flat'. The trick is to keep them warm - not always an option I know.

Incidently, I've had lipo cells have nearly full charge (over 80%) despite having been left after a charge for more than 2 weeks.

Oh, one other last problem with Li based batteries is that if they drop below a specific voltage then technically you're not supposed to try revive them (else things can go boom!). A lot of laptops with Li based batteries suffer to this, people throw out 'dead' packs which actually just were left too long without a charge.

PLD.

Re:This is bad?

[FireFury03]

Because of their memory effect, NiMH are the most inconvenient batteries to use.

NiMH have very little 'memory effect' - NiCd's are the offenders there. However, all batteries need to be treated correctly - I keep my batteries in sets and don't mix the batteries within those sets, that way I never end up mixing fully charged batteries with semi-charged, etc (which really does kill batteries).

NiMH cell capacities are now on-par with Alkalines, the only downside of NiMH cells is that they do discharge over time.

Whilest Li-ion's have a higher energy density, they are also not compatable with alkaline batteries, and when I'm on holiday and stuck with a dead battery I'd prefer to have the option to buy some alkalines from the shop rather than do without my camera.

(I have a HP Photosmart 850 and am _very_ happy with it)

Re:This is bad?

[drinkypoo]

If you need maximum battery power for your professional work, you need a professional camera, and multiple batteries. A pro wouldn't use a Fisher-Price Kodak 110 camera, either, unless maybe they were doing something experimental. If you don't want the batteries to self-drain, leave it connected to the charging system at all times. Easy peasy.

ceramic

[aaron_ds]

Ceramics==Transparent?

Re:ceramic

[Anonymous Coward]

Yeah, ceremics can be transperent. It's harder for cermics to be, however, seeing as it's just a bunch of (transparent?) granules smushed together under high heat.

Optical quality (and price) general go as the following:

Cermics
Amorphous Solid (glass)
Single Crystal

The more "regular" the structure (the less interface bounderies and material gradients) the better the optical qualities are.

Re:ceramic

[uberdave]

So, they are using a cheaper, lower quality lens and expecting people to pay 350 pounds for it? That's about US$630! Am I missing something? Is the ceramic lens harder/more scratch resistant? You could buy a 7 or 8 megapixel camera for that kind of money.

Re:ceramic

[whitespacedout]

ceramic==usually more scratchproof
eg: the rado ceramic watchface cannot be scratched with mild steel.

Re:ceramic

[morcheeba]

I'm holding out for a lens made of concrete or Aluminum!

Re:ceramic

[secretsquirel]

High quality glass lens's were probobaly too cheap to produce so they had to switch to ceramic so they can still charge $600.00 by calling it a nano-composite microstructured giggily fart. At least that's my theory anyway.

image noise

[spacerodent]

they mention image noise several times in the article and act like it's isn't a big deal. If you can see image noise on a normal 3 megapixel image (assuming its somehwere around 1024x768 or greater) then its probally pretty bad. They mention it twice too. I wonder if it has anything to do with the ceramic lens which seems to be the only interesting thing about the camera. Otherwise it seems pretty average in about every category.

Re:image noise

[cujo_1111]

1024 x 768 is only 0.8 MP, not 3 MP.

3 MP is more like 2048 x 1536.

The image noise is probably more due to the ludicrously small CCD unit (4.54 x 3.42 mm) that Casio are using. As a comparison the 2.8 MP Nikon D1H uses a largish CCD of 23.7 x 15.5 mm and I know which one would give better photos, lenses notwithstanding.

The ceramic lens would impact the sharpness of the photo more.

Re:image noise

[Kyle Hamilton]

The more pixels a digital camera has on its CCD sensor, the larger the pictures you can take. The following is a list of the maximum size an image may be (measured by height x width) for the three most popular types of digital cameras on the market today. * 2-megapixel digital cameras - 1600x1200 * 3-megapixel digital cameras - 2048x1536 * 4-megapixel digital cameras - 2272 x 1704

Re:image noise

[cujo_1111]

You have a point, but if you have two 6 MP CCDs, one 5 mm x 5 mm and the other 25 mm x 25 mm. The larger CCD will take the better photo.

This is one case where smaller is not necessarily better.

Re:image noise

[arodland]

On a related note, if you have two CCDs, one 5MP, and the other 8MP, both 11mm diagonal, the 8MP one doesn't necessarily look much better ;)

Ceramic vs. Glass

[HotshotXV]

You know, the review did a good job of letting you know that ceramic lenses allow you to make the camera smaller... but is the image quality the same through ceramic? Wouldn't it be more translucent, and thus more susceptable to light refractions? Someone help me out here.

Re:Ceramic vs. Glass

[Anonymous Coward]

Just would like to point out how silly all of this ceramic vs. glass business is, since glass is considered a ceramic! And, "ceramics" encompasses quite a lot of materials. You really have to take announcements like this with a grain of salt, and realize that while it may be better, it is also a gimmick when they say something like new "ceramic" lens! Oh yeah, and I'm a ceramic engineer...

Re:Ceramic vs. Glass

[fossa]

As the other ceramic engineer pointed out, glass is considered a ceramic. What makes it good for lenses is the fact that it is amorphous, i.e. has no periodic crystal structure. Thus, light will pass through it without being refracted in strange ways because on a macroscopic level, all the glass is the "same" (or the heterogeneity is small enough and distributed evenly and randomly).

Now, I didn't read the article, though I wouldn't expect it to get into details. I assume by "ceramic" they mean "crystalline ceramic" (versus amorphous). When you make crystalline ceramics, you don't typically make one continuous crystal (like a polished gemstone), but many small (10 to 500 micron is typical) crystals (grains) surrounded by very thin amorphous regions (grain boundaries). Grain boundaries serve to refract the light (I suppose they are much larger and thus less heterogenous than anomalies in the amorphous glass), which is why ceramics (think dinner plate) are opaque. I'm getting to the limits of my [limited] knowledge, but I believe the only real way to make transparent crystalline ceramics is to use a single crystal which contains no grain boundaries. This tends to be costly due to the need to melt the material to coax it into a single crystal and the high melting temperatures of ceramics (see silicon industry).

Given that, I'm not sure why using a single crystal lens would have an advantage over an amorphous glass lens... Perhaps you can achieve a higher index of refraction.

Re:Ceramic vs. Glass

[Discordia]

There's another way to make polycrystalline (as opposed to single crystals) ceramics transparent: Make the grains smaller than the wavelength of light you're trying to transmit, eliminate porosity completely, and eliminate the sintering aids that go to the grain boundaries and fudge up the refractive index there.

Transparent polycrystalline alumina (not aluminum) has been in regular use for 40+ years. It's called Lucalox by GE and is the refractory material that makes up the tube used to hold the molten sodium in all those yellow/orange sodium streetlamps.

I'm assuming this is what the camera lens is made of, but have nothing to back that up with.

As a side note, you may have noticed that every few years someone publishes a paper on a new way to make transparent polycrystalline alumina, then the non-materials-science media (*cough slashdot*) catches wind and assumes alumina is the same thing as aluminum, and suddenly the prophecy of transparent aluminum from Star Trek IV has come true. It's sort of a running joke in the materials science community.

Skeptical

[Hao Wu]

Sounds like a gimmick. Can someone say if ceramic is truly better than glass, or just better "in theory"?

Re:Skeptical

[servognome]

I would think a ceramic would be optically worse due to the fact that the structure would be less regular....
Umm you're calling glass "regular", glass is amorphous, it doesn't get much more irregular. Ceramics have an ordered structure.

Re:Skeptical

[mysticgoat]

Sounds like a gimmick. Can someone say if ceramic is truly better than glass, or just better "in theory"?

I'm guessing, but I think in this case the ceramic is better than glass because production can be less expensive.

Cheap cameras of this size use plastic lenses formed in molds, where the chosen plastic has a relatively low index of refraction. The lens is thicker, but is tolerant of the surface imperfections from the molding process, and is generally lighter than a glass lens that had the same optical quailities.

If you molded glass lenses this way, you'd face an expensive polishing operation afterward.

I'm guessing that these ceramic lenses are molded as "green bodies" and then sintered to reduce them to their final dimensions. The shrinking would reduce the surface imperfections of the molding process, so ceramics with fairly high indexes of refraction could be used. The end result would be a thin lens with many glass-like qualities, produced by an inexpensive molding process (a sintering oven would not add much to the cost).

review

[AresTheImpaler]

There is also a review in Steve Digicams. I like their reviews because they also include some sample pictures you can use to compare to other cameras (of course the pictures are taken of the same buildings, etc. but they differe in light available. The sample pictures are still good).

Re:review

[Sosarian]

might be nice to actually link to the review?

http://www.steves-digicams.com/2004_reviews/ex-s10 0.html

Did I miss something?

[RandyOo]

I don't see how they were the first, when Steve's Digicam's has a review for this exact model dated two weeks ago. It's a much better and more thorough review as well, IMHO.

Re:Did I miss something?

[momerath2003]

Note the email address on the article submitter:

stuart@pocket-lint.co.uk

A little bit of self-whoring on his part.

expensive!

[harshbarj]

I paid less for my nikon 4mp camera. Sure this is a smaller camera but smaller is not always better. I already feel like I'm going to break my current one and it's huuge next to this one.

another review

[Leto-II]

There's a much better review at Steves Digicams

Might want to check that one out too.

Ceramic is tougher than Glass ... but not the HULK

[xmas2003]

Hulk drop Puny Human Glass digicam - stops working.
Hulk drop Ceramic digicam - still works.
Hulk get angry, SMASH ceramic digicam - stops working.

Hulk running for president.
Puny Human /.'ers vote for Hulk here!

Page 1 is just flashy

[Da Twink Daddy]

Save yourself some time and jump to the full review, the verdict, or the reader reviews--doesn't look like readers agree with the 9/10 rating.

Re:Page 1 is just flashy

[Lord_Dweomer]

Don't do the slashvertiser any more favors. The email address of the submitter is stuart@pocket-lint.co.uk. Just another slashvertisement, nothing to see, move along.

What's up with the ceramic lens?

[MythoBeast]

What I want to know is why a ceramic len is more useful than a glass one. I presume it's more durable, but I don't remember the last time a lens in a consumer electronics digital camera broke before the CCD went kaput. Does it have a higher defraction index? Is it more transparent to a wider range of colors? What's up with that?

Re:What's up with the ceramic lens?

[klang]

dpreview had a press release from Casio a few weeks ago..

Highlights: ... higher refractive index than glass. [snip]... thinner and stronger than conventional glass. ..[snip] reduction in the profile of a lens system by approximately 20%.

Re:What's up with the ceramic lens?

[Exocet]

Does anyone happen to know if a ceramic lens would be "more" or "better" suited to ultraviolet photography as opposed to a glass one? I know that around, oh, 315nm UV won't penetrate the glass. UV photos supposedly look "fogged" when trying to shoot at or below 315nm with conventional glass-based optics. At that point a UV photographer must invest in hideously expensive crystal-based optics.

I do a tiny bit of UV photography, BTW.

uhhh digital?

[deglr6328]

Why is this story under the Digital Equipment Corporation category? Does the submitter not know of the once great now dead company?

Ceramic lenses

[nels_tomlinson]

I had no idea what a ceramic lens is, so I googled and found: this press release and this on Gizmodo.

In a nutshell, the transparent ceramic lens can be thinner and lighter than a glass lens because it has a higher refractice index (bends light more). It's also stronger, they say. Nifty, just what you need to make a smaller camera. Of course, if you put that tiny lens in front of lousy electronics, you get a lousy camera. As another post mentioned, the review said there was a lot of noise, which sounds like a lousy camera to me.

Re:Ceramic lenses

[Jamesie]

It's just the way it's made - glassnotes.Com

Re:Ceramic lenses

[eclectro]

Yes but they make telescopes out of fancy shmancy material so it won't sag. Obviously its all the impurities (like sand) in old glass that makes it sag.

Re:Ceramic lenses

[swv3752]

Add an order of ten and you might see some sag. Some really old glass windows in usually cathedrals have thicker bottoms than tops.

What is a ceramic

[LS]

Stupid question #1: Why isn't glass considered a ceramic? I've googled around for information on what a ceramic is, and I haven't found anything that precludes glass...

LS

Re:What is a ceramic

[goneutt]

Oddly enough, Steel with 6.67% bw Carbon is Iron Carbide, a ceramic. According to my material science book, Ceramics are compounds of metallic and nonmetallic elelments. Ionic or Covalent bonds form which are stronger than metallic bonds.

Glass is an amorphous solid, a liquid that is cooled at a rate too high to allow crystals to form. Glass ceramics have a high crystalline component to their microstructure. As a result the hardness of a glass ceramic comes to a higher level.

And yes, I am a Mechanical Engineering student. (Who should be typing a lab report for his material science class right now)

Casio first developed transparent ceramic lens

[erick99]

Some googling came up with this:

August 02, 2004, TOKYO, JAPAN - Using its proprietary optical technology, CASIO COMPUTER CO., LTD. has developed the world's first lens using transparent ceramics. This breakthrough will make it possible to create zoom lenses for cameras with greatly reduced profiles.

There are soom cool pictures of the lenses as well as some text and graphics that explain what is going on pretty well.

Refractive index

[LS]

Here's a picture of the lense. Apparently the cool thing about this lense is that it has a higher index of refraction, allowing it to be thinner and take less space, hence the slim profile of the casio.

LS

Re:Refractive index

[eclectro]

Indeed, that is the key point. From this list you can get an idea of the index of refraction of common materials. This ceramic glass has index of refraction of 2.08.

Presumably this ceramic glass has the advantage of being hard and have a very low cost, otherwise they might as well use cubic zirconia (index of refraction 2.17)

This might be a case of a solution finding a problem.

Re:Refractive index

[JazzHarper]

It seems that the properties of a ceramic lens offer only marginal benefits to a camera, particularly one with such a small lens in the first place.

Reduced weight and greater resistance to scratches would be of great value in eyeglasses. Where can I get Lumicera lenses to put in front of my eyeballs?
-

FINALLY!!!!

[stevok]

Now I can take pictures of Mt. St. Helens' glowing rocks! Before, my camera lens kept melting. With this new ceramic heat-resistant lens, my time on the volcano is only limited by the durability of my asbestos suit!

Comment removed

[account_deleted]

Comment removed based on user account deletion

It's ceramic so you can...

[mtec]

take pictures of really hot women!

*sorry*

Lens manufacturer's information

[helge]

The lens is made by MuRata and is called Lumicera. Info can be found at http://www.murata.com/opt/lumicera.html

Comparison of Refractive Index between Transparent Ceramics and Conventional Optical Glass
The refractive index of the transparent ceramics is 2.08 (lambda = 587 nm). It is quite high compared with that of conventional optical glasses (between 1.5 to 1.8). Furthermore, as there is no birefringence in the ceramics, there is a potential for downsizing and advancement of optical devices with optical elements, such as lenses.

Ceramics and glasses

[panurge]

This is largely marketing speak, IMHO. Glasses are supercooled liquids but inevitably contain a certain amount of crystallised material. Ceramics are crystalline, but unless they are single-crystal will usually contain a certain amount of glass in the matrix. This is one reason why ceramics usually have a softening range rather than a sudden melting temperature as with pure crystals. (The other is that the variation in crystal structure also creates a range of melting.)

I suspect the actual achievement here is managing to produce a transparent lens from a high refractive index material, but explain that to the masses who buy low-end digital cameras.

piece of crap

[Djinh]

Check the pics in this review.

No matter that it's ceramic, the lens is still crap...

What will it take before we see a smallish digicam with a decent lens???

Phase diagrams-progress!

[panurge]

Your generation doesn't know how lucky it is. I wish we had had clickable points on phase diagrams in my day, instead of getting looked down on by lecturers when we asked stupid questions (that nobody else in class knew the answer to either...)
And we had to make our own steel out of charcoal, magnetite and a lot of clay...and we were lucky, our neighbors were still living in the Bronze Age.

Sigh.

[porkchop_d_clown]

That explains why museums are full of puddles where the roman vases used to be.

You're spreading a myth.

Birefringence

[djmurdoch]

Furthermore, as there is no birefringence in the ceramics, there is a potential for downsizing and advancement of optical devices with optical elements, such as lenses.


I didn't know what birefringence was, so I looked it up: it's the phenomenon in certain crystals that causes them to have two indices of refraction, so light beams entering are split into two parts.

It's not a problem in glass lenses, but would be if you made a lens out of those crystalline materials.

What about other optical properties?

[Inode Jones]

We are told that the ceramic material has an index of refraction of 2.08 and is more durable than other glasses.

Being highly myopic, I am interested in ophthalmic applications of new materials. Right now, I am wearing a Nikon 1.74 index plastic lens, which is quite thin for its power.

The highest-index material that I am aware of currently being marketed for eyeglass use is the Zeiss Lantal 1.9 index glass. However, this material is quite shatter-prone, having only 1mm center thickness. I am told that one can poke a finger through a Lantal lens.

In addition to refractive power, for eyeglass use one must consider other optical properties, in particular the Abbe value. The Abbe value characterizes the chromatic aberration of a lens. The lower the Abbe number, the worse color fringing will be; some eyeglass wearers cannot tolerate high-index lenses because they typically have lower Abbe values than plain plastic.

Interestingly, Abbe is potentially irrevelant in a digital camera, because any chromatic aberration can be digitally removed. Effectively, you treat the R/G/B images from the sensor as three independent images and size them individually to compensate for the aberration. This cannot easily be done with a film camera, and is not possible at all with eyeglasses.

Re:What about other optical properties?

[ChrisMaple]

High dispersion is still a problem in digital cameras. Digital processing cannot completely fix chromatic focus errors. Even with three sensors at different focus points, there is an error band across the split spectra.

High index material also causes more problems with internal reflections. This is solved with coating (and multicoating), but I've read that suitable materials to multicoat high refractive index optics are unavilable.