Its weird. We have a video camera. We have high end digital SLRs. But we never had a take-anywhere-pocket-point-and-shoot camera. So we were thinking about how to best capture the moment(s) of birth and life and everything else that is Ashley.

Video camera is great and all, for around the house most likely. We have 12 tapes of wedding footage, of which we have only watched a few before getting bored. It seems like when you take video, you tend to just press the freaking button and go. This results in a lot of shots of really really boring stuff. I could just see it now… 4 hours of labor footage… fun…

SLRs are great for getting all artsy and such. But really, they are heavy, and a pain. Its not like you can just shove the giant lens in your pocket and pull it out whenever you want to take a photo of something. Sure the photo will be great, and you have alot of creative control, but frankly, thats rarely needed. There are photos, and there are snapshots. When you on vacation you take mostly snapshots.

So the pocket sized point-and-shoot camera comes up for discussion. Do we get one since we already have all these other things? What about camera phones? NO, they suck. Can i see myself lugging around the SLR at the hospital while Ashley is being born? NO. Video camera? 12 tapes of birth footage sounds a bit boring and played out. But what if i had a pocket camera that could do short clips of video, and take good snaps? Seems to me that a pocket camera would be the most versatile.

We decided on the exilim EX-z75 from casio. Mostly the deciding factors were not the typical decisions when it comes to buying a camera. Normally we would look at cost vs photo quality vs features vs everything else. In this case we basically looked at size and memory type for as cheap as we could get without sucking. Memory was relevant because I have SD cards laying around. Size, because i gotta put it in my pocket. Does it do video? Yep. Does it take photos? yep. Does it cost less than the birth will? yep.

Having now played around with the casio camera for a few days it is very solid feeling. The pictures are very good quality, though I really haven’t done any comparisons, nor will I. I don’t care that its the best or not, but can i tell who that is in the picture? The colors are pretty good, as is the light balance. One downside to the camera is the speed of the shutter. Its a bit slow. Im noticing that I am missing a lot of shots, but that could also be because I just am not used to a small digital camera like this. My SLR never misses.

The Exilim has what seems like a ridiculous amount of photo modes. I will be using two of them… photo and video… The rest are just bizarre to me. Ebay mode??? LOL Whatever floats your boat I suppose. The in camera filters are silly as well and I never understood why anyone would ever use them. Just change it after on your computer if you want to. Black and white or sepia, still, do it in post.

All in all though the menu system is quite nice I thought. Easy to navigate, easy to understand. big icons and readable text. Most common features are quickly accessible via the side bar in the LCD viewer. You can also switch to “easy mode” which is like giving the camera a lobotomy…

So i think it was a good purchase. I hope that I don’t forget it on the way to the hospital.