Race to be the smallest reaches new low

A silly millimeter thinner?

What’s in a name? In late January, the Casio Exilim EX-V7 appeared to lay claim to being the world’s smallest 7-megapixel, 7x zoom camera. Now Samsung says that its new L77 is the world’s thinnest 7-megapixel, 7x zoom. What’s the story here?

It doesn’t take a multimillion-dollar testing laboratory in Yonkers to answer this one: The Samsung is the smallest hands down. Based on the manufacturers’ published specs, I estimate that the L77 is a whopping 4-mm thinner. (For the metrically challenged, that’s an advantage of about one-sixth of an inch.) What’s more, the L77 is about 3-mm narrower from side to side and 1-mm shorter from head to toe. But, hey, who’s counting?

Bragging rights aside, what are some more important differences between the two? The Samsung will cost $349 when it’s available in April, while the Casio should be available for $399 later this month. The Samsung can shoot at up to ISO 1600, while the Casio goes up to 800. (Our recent tests of other point-and-shoots at such high settings have found images to be very noisy.) The Samsung shoots at shutter speeds as fast as 1/1,250 of a second, while the Casio’s fastest is 1/800, which may not matter unless you’re trying to freeze some very fast action.

One area where the Casio excels is in its image stabilization, important for a camera this small with a zoom this strong. The Casio has mechanical stabilization, while the Samsung uses software, which isn’t as effective a way to compensate for camera shake. I saw some other Samsung models at the booth with true image stabilizers, so clearly there was some compromise in the design of the L77.

I tried both of these cameras out on the PMA07 show floor yesterday. Personally, I find these small cameras, with their sometimes impossibly tiny controls, awkward to use. Especially frustrating were the zoom controls. With both cameras, I had to ask the sales staff to tell me where they were.

The Casio’s zoom (circled in the image on left) is a little button or knob that you slide vertically, while the Samsung’s (circled on the right) is what appears to be a little thumbwheel that you lift or lower, but don’t rotate. (Click on either thumbnail image for a closer view.)

So much for intuitiveness.

If you’ve got to have something tiny yet powerful, I guess you can accept these kinds of compromises. But surely there’s a way to design these sorts of cameras that makes them easier to use.

— Jeff Fox, Technology Editor