Still the shrinking of the high-speed camera is a fantastic thing. It has roughly the same capabilities as the EX-F1 (30fps instead of 60 for stills, and 1000fps instead of 1200 for video, but still) but is waaay smaller, like normal-size slim point-and-shoot size. They hadn’t turned on the lights when I was taking shots so sorry if the flash is a bit overbearing. I’d like to give a shout out to the official Engadget guy who was flopping around in front of everyone else, getting in all my shots. Thanks, dude!

Kazuo Kashio himself then demonstrated what they said was going to be a revolution in photography. He took a short movie of a model on a white background presenting a box, then proceeded to show how it could be “composited” onto a “background.” In other words, the newest generation of Casio stuff does basic photo compositing, essentially magic wanding your photos a million times for you. Revolutionary that’s not, I’m afraid. They didn’t even show the process! Come on! He then continued to show photo composites for like 15 minutes straight, explaining every time how it was revolutionary. I stayed till the end, but half the room had left by then to get the free watches they were giving away outside. They literally gave away the last one to the person in front of me. These are the tribulations I go through for you, reader. You would have had yourself a giveaway if things had gone differently.

The high-speed point and shoots are the FS10 ($350), which has a 3x optical zoom, and the FC100 ($400), which has a 5x optical zoom. Both have 9 megapixels and shoot video with reduced amounts. We’ll have more info in a few minutes, and video of the weirdness as well.

Check out the gallery below — it’s in reverse chronological order because of the way I selected the things in Aperture. You like that?

[PSGallery=1kfh3nx10rp]

This isn’t to say that these cameras are weak — on the contrary, they’re all perfectly good cameras, they’re just not the second coming of sliced bread, as their makers wanted us to believe.

How cool is this? The Casio Exilim EX-F1 is a freak camera to be sure, but if they’re going to continue expanding its capabilities with stuff like this, it’s going to be the most popular freak on the block.

You could already turn back the clock with the EX-F1 in certain modes by holding down the button halfway, but now you can put on a mode that will recapture the last five seconds of video whether you were holding it down or not. Sounds like a real waste of battery, but at your kid’s birthday party it’s another safety net to have so you can capture those precious moments, like when little Billy’s stripper pops out of the cake. So cute!

I think the update will show up here when it goes live.

The New York Times’ David Pague must see a lot of stupid gadgets on a daily basis. We do here, so Lord knows how much he has to sift through. But this Casio camera, the Ex-F1, surely isn’t one of those. That’s the impression, at least, I get from his review.

The idea behind the camera is that, a lot of time, you’re anticipating a good picture, but you don’t know exactly when it’s going to happen. Like, say, you’re at your kid’s baseball game and he’s at bat. You don’t know exactly when he’s going to make contact with the ball, but you have a general idea. What you do is press the main button halfway when you’re getting ready to shhot. Once the moment arrives—holy smokes he hit a home run—you press down all the way. The camera then goes back into its cache and grabs a number of the preceding frames as well as any photos post-button push. Hopefully you understood that.

Needless to say, Pogue liked the Ex-F1 quite a bit, though with some caveats. One, he says it’s still an amateur camera at heart—it’s no D3 or 1Ds anything. Also, it doesn’t have the best light sensor, so many photos will come out on the blurry side. Zooming is slow, too. And some other stuff, but it’s nit-picky. Best to appreciate the F1 for what it is, the first implementation of a really good idea. Now they (Casio or other camera companies) just need to make sure there’s a solid camera underneath that solid concept.

At MacWorld, I got a little hands-on time with Casio’s interesting new hybrid camera, the EX-F1. It’s not a DSLR, nor is it a point-n-shoot, but it has many features of both. It’s also a great high-speed picture taker, with speeds of up to 600 frames per second. I was impressed by it, despite its high price.

Tech-On has a great interview with Jin Nakayama, one of the product managers of the camera, and he’s made an interesting claim: the day of the shutter on camera is done. And it makes sense: CCDs don’t really need one, they’re a hold-over from an analog age.

It’s an interesting interview, and you’ll learn more about this amazing camera, as well as see some new videos of it in action.

[Interview] Casio: There Is No Need for Camera Shutter [Tech-On!]

At CES it was behind lock and key, visible only through a glass cell. At Macworld, though, Casio let me have my way with the camera, and I must say I was impressed by the things it can do, while at the same time wondering why there are some things it can’t.

The camera itself is lighter than a DSLR, that being simply because it lacks the DSLRs intricate mechanics. That’s welcome to we bloggers who, at the end of the day, require the work of three Swedish Bloggirls to get our tightened necks worked out so we can sleep.

It operates much like a DSLR though, with the same sort of switches, knobs, buttons, and lens controls. The lens is static, you can’t readily swap it out as you can with most DSLRs, which is a drawback, but it’s a good lens as is, with a good wide-angle view.

SDHC is the card of choice for the camera, and the battery is said to last long enough to fill up a 4GB card easily, likely stretching all the way to an 8GB including video.

The display is big and bright, much like Yours Truly. When showing video, it refreshes nicely, with no stutter as you sometimes get with point-n-shoots.

What’s really exciting, though, is the fast shutter speed. The camera’s not aimed at casual users, the rest of the Exilim line is fine for that. Nor is it aimed at professionals, or even prosumers; DSLRs are a must for them. The EX-F1 is aimed at niche markets, such as scientists who want to watch a chemical reaction in super-slow-motion, or sports coaches who want to be able to examine exactly where things went wrong, or power stalkers who need to know the exact moment Britney broke down last.

For these people, the EX-F1 bridges a gap that’s left them in the gully of indecision, and it should make many people — but by no means all — very happy when it hits later this year.