I was reading the lastest copy of Allure magazine while I was at Walmart earlier and I came across an interesting product they mentioned as a “hot buy”.
This is the Casio Exlim EX-Z300. I honestly don’t like Casio cameras. I think they are kinda flimsy and don’t produce truly sharp images as other brands do. My brother had a Casio a couple of years ago and it was a complete POS! Anyhow, the article I read pointed out a very interesting feature on this model.
It has a “Make-up Feature”! Here’s a quote from the website explaining what this is:
You had the perfect outfit on and smiled just right, but there’s just that one thing you wish you could polish. Well now you can. With the new Make-up Function, simply use the LCD monitor to quickly touch up your photos. It’s like having your own stylist, but without the arguments. The EX-Z300 is equipped with the “Make-up button” that allows effects to be applied with one touch.
From another site explaining it further:
The function recognizes faces in a scene to optimize focus and exposure. It makes the skin look smoother in the picture and softens shadows on the face cast by sunlight with the use of an image processing technology. Users can shoot pictures while checking the effect of the function on the LCD screen. The EX-Z300 is equipped with a button dedicated to this function.
The makeup function makes blotches and dullness less obtrusive by lightening the skin color of faces in the image. In addition, the function “makes the skin tone look softer and smoother, while covering annoying little wrinkles,” Casio said. With this function, “the skin looks clearer, younger and more natural in the pictures,” according to the company. The intensity of the image processing can be selected from 12 levels.
It’s both good and bad to have this feature. Why? For people that just want to take pictures and not worry about post image editing, this is a great feature. Taking pics of family, of your self (think of those FOTDs) and friends will undoubtedly gain some “Wow, your/their/her skin is so smooth and fabulous!” remarks. That’s the good part.
The bad could possibly be the amount of sharpness you might lose in the picture. But then again, that’s why you should always carefully research the camera you are interested in before buying. Here is a link to an in-depth review on the camera. Also, here are pictures taken using the Makeup feature, both on and off. Just scroll down till you see the portrait pictures.
Overall, if you really care about making your skin smooth all the time in pictures, then maybe this is the camera for you. Personally, I would leave the touch-ups to doing them on Photoshop where I can better control the enhancements than to the camera.