Casio QV-R40 Review
- Product:
- Casio 4.0 Megapixel QV-R40 (company site)
- What’s Good:
- Compact size (160 g), Fast startup, Battery life, Good price (less then $300 CND)
- What’s Bad:
- Noticeable noise, Slow when saving photo, Occasional color issues.
I set out this past weekend to pick out a decent digital camera with a few goals in mind. We wanted a small pocket sized camera but not something that would cost too much. Although this purchase was not for me, my own camera is fairly large and I had every intention of using this camera myself as often as I could.
What's Included
- Two AA NIMH rechargeable batteries
- Battery charger
- Wrist strap
- USB cable
- Software: PhotoLoader, PhotoHands, and Drivers
- 13 page basic manual in print + full manual on CD
The camera comes with the basics and everything you need to get started except for memory. The QV-R40 only comes with 10 meg of internal memory so if you plan on taking any more then 5-15 pictures (depending on settings) you will also need to purchase a Secure Digital (SD) card. Probably a 256 or 512 costing approx another $150 CND.
Menu Features
- REC mode (Snapshot, Best Shot, Movie)
- Self-timer (10 sec, 2 sec, x3, Off)
- Size (2304x1712, 2240x1680, 1600x1200, 1280x960, 640x480)
- Quality (Fine, Normal, Economy)
- EV Shift (-2EV to +2EV)
- White balance (Auto, Sunlight, Shade, Light Bulb, Fluorescent, Manual)
- ISO (Auto, 80, 160, 320)
- AF area (Spot, Multi)
- Metering (Multi, Center Weighted, spot)
- Filter (Off, B&W, Sepia, Red, Green, Blue, Yellow, Pink, Purple)
- Sharpness (Soft, Normal, Hard)
- Saturation (Low, Normal, High)
- Contrast (Low, Normal, High)
- Flash intensity (Weak, Normal, Strong)
- Grid (On, Off)
- Digital zoom (On, Off)
- Review (On, Off)
- L/R key (REC mode, EV shift, White Balance, ISO, Off)
The coolest option there is the L/R Key value that will allow you to customize the left and right buttons to perform actions of your choice.
Best Shot (aka BS) Features
Casio packed this camera with 21 default settings and an option to add more of your own. Each "Best Shot" is designed to quickly change menu settings and avoid knowing what ISO, White Balance, Shutter speed is used for. Others like "Coupling Shot" are more interesting and stitches 2 photos together much like a panorama would. View Full Library.
Other Features
30 second avi video clips (no audio) are available using the M-JPG codec. From recent troubles with other avi files on other cameras using this codec, Windows Media Player no longer seems to support this on default and I have had trouble getting these files to play.
Image resizing, rotation and cropping can also all be done within the camera.
Noise Problem
The biggest and only real issue I have with the camera so far is the noticeable noise in images. Especially shooting images at higher resolution, 2304x1712 generates 2 meg jpg files with lots of artifacts on solid color areas. When resized down lower, the quality increases with much smoother colors. View Steves-Digicams review for photo examples.
Battery Life
The QV-R40 takes and comes with two AA rechargeable batteries plus a wall charger that holds two batteries at a time. A full charge takes about 4 hours. Battery life seems exceptionally long to me, especially since my older Toshiba model is only good for an hour at most. I have yet to test the photo count but based on other sites, 220 photos or 110 minutes seems to be the common suggestion.
Conclusion
Overall it's not a bad little camera. It's compact body and fast startup makes it a nice everyday camera to carry around. The many presets makes it easy for a point and shoot camera but the option to control White Balance, ISO and EV manually are also there.
The camera was not bought for printing large prints so the noise issue on large images can be ignored for the most part. Reducing the size for the web or printing a 4x6 will calm that down for what "we" were looking for.
Other sites have mixed reviews with the general overview being positive but all have the similar complaint of noise level. Here are a few of them:
Comments
Ken D - October 19, 2004 1:04 pm
I bought Casio QV-R40. In general I like it as many people who wnat to have some thing small but serious enough to take a good picture. But I have one problem with
display mode. When I want to review pictures in memory camera display and shut down after 2 or 3 second with message " Batery low". I checked batery it is ok and still full. It never happens when camera is in normal ready mode. In both cases LCD display is on so there is no way that one mode consumes much more power than the another one? I already sent my camera to repair.
If somebody know how to contact Casio engineering department, please give me information.
Stephen DesRoches - November 25, 2004 2:04 pm
To add to the battery life I recently took this camera on a 5 day trip to San Francisco took 236 photos. I did not need to replace or recharge the batteries at any point of the trip.
melanie - January 17, 2005 11:58 am
Hi..hope you can help me .I'm hopeless with anything digital..i'd just purchased my casio QVR40 in NJ..get back to Bermuda and lost instructions a week later .stores will not give them to me as i didn't buy it here ..can you please help me ????.Miss M.Wedgwood.