Casio Exilim Tryx EX-TR100

Digital cameras don't tend to vary much in design as there just aren't 101 ways you can design a compact camera. Casio, however, has done something completely new with the Exilim Tryx TR100. The lens and sensor are mounted on a separate part of the camera to the screen, so the two parts can be swivelled around independently. On top of that, the main part of the camera is mounted in a kind of flip-out frame that rotates around the camera body. The TR100 can therefore be used any way up or any way around and can be swivelled into seemingly endless different positions. It therefore clearly stands out from other compacts on the market right now.

Handling

It's difficult to judge the Tryx using the same criteria as regular compacts, since its design and handling are so very different to any other camera out there. Although the idea of a swivel body has already been seen a few years ago in the Nikon S10, for example, such cameras were principally designed as a way of fitting a bulky lens into a compact camera. Here, though, the TR100 is loaded with a super-compact fixed-focus lens (the camera is just 15 mm thick) and the swivel body and frame are intended to revolutionise handling more than anything else. You can, for example, flip the screen around to face you for help taking self-portraits, or freely take photos above an obstacle, at waist height or at other unusual angles.

The frame pulls out from the actual camera body and can be freely swivelled around 360° with a notch at every quarter of a turn to hold it in the position of your choice. This design makes the Tryx particularly comfortable to use when filming video, as it handles like camcorder. However, the frame can also be used as a stand, so you can position the Tryx as required then take a photo using the self-timer function or the movement-detection function, which takes a photo two seconds after detecting movement in a pre-selected zone. That can be very useful for self-portraits, as all you have to do is decide where you're going to stand, select the zone onscreen, then get in position and wait two seconds for the picture. We just think it's a shame that there's no option for taking a photo instantly when movement is detected, which could be handy for close-ups of wild animals if you hook the camera on a tree, for example.

Otherwise, the Tryx is a fairly standard touchscreen compact, with a touch-control interface that's not particularly stylish (square buttons, brightly coloured menus etc.) but which is clear and simple. We do, however, think that there's not a clear enough distinction between the quick menu and the general settings menu.

The touch-controls are on a par with other current touchscreen compacts, which isn't necessarily a compliment. When will manufacturers understand that users who buy touchscreen cameras usually already own some kind of touchscreen device and so they're used to the kind of accurate controls and intuitive gestures seen in most touchscreen smartphones?


The screen is surprisingly bright (over 650 cd/m²), which means you can still see what you're doing most of the time when outdoors in bright sunlight—don't expect miracles though, as it's still a glossy reflective screen. The screen's white balance is excessively blue (8400 K, compared with 6500 K for a standard white) but is very stable, and the gamma is almost perfect, with just a slight tendency to make mid-greys look a lit too light. Colour fidelity is surprisingly good too, and while the blue and red tones aren't exactly spot-on, the average deltaE is just 4, which is much more accurate than most of the other compact camera screens we've tested! Once you've got used to the strong blue, you'll therefore be able to effectively sort and delete photos based on the onscreen colours.

One downside of the camera's design is that there's no way of quickly accessing the LED light that features here instead of a regular camera flash. Since there's no 'flash' mode, as soon as you activate the diode it stays on until you turn it off again, rather than just lighting up in a burst to help you take a photo. To turn the LED on and off you have to go into the camera menu, then find the LED option, then select it and confirm it. Obviously an extra onscreen 'flash' button would take up room on the display, but we'd rather have direct access to the flash than the zoom, which is pretty useless in practice (the lens has a fixed focal length so there's only a low-grade digital zoom).

Plus, for the swivel frame to be really interesting, it'd be good to have at least one shutter-release button on the frame itself, then the Tryx would really handle like a camcorder. A tripod attachment wouldn't go amiss either.

One last thing we weren't too keen on is that the battery can't be taken out of the camera, so you can only charge the Tryx via its USB connection. The bad news is that the camera has a ridiculously poor battery life (we could barely manage over 150 photos in real-life conditions) and it takes an age to recharge, even when plugged into the mains.

Responsiveness

The autofocus is relatively responsive, taking no more than a third of a second to focus in good light conditions and around half a second when the light starts to fade. You only have to wait a second between taking two photos, which is all the more important since there's no burst mode!

The only slight let-down is the start-up time which, at around two seconds, isn't all that impressive—especially since the TR100 should theoretically start up instantly as doesn't have a zoom lens to pop out.

Image Quality

We might as well cut to the chase in this section:


Although the Tryx has a BSI CMOS sensor, sensitivity isn't a strong point for this camera. Smoothing kicks in to wipe out pretty much any of the detail still hanging on in there from 800 ISO upwards.

In fact, detail on the whole is fairly thin on the ground, because even if image sharpness is just about acceptable in the middle of the frame, the edges of the shot are quite simply blurred. That isn't always noticeable in real-life situations, as blocks of relatively detail-free colour look perfectly acceptable on a 4" x 6" (11 x 15 cm) print or when you look at pictures on a computer screen. Detailed areas in the corner of the frame can be a bit more problematic, however, as blurring is visible even on small-sized prints.


To make matters worse, we often ended up with our fingers in shot or smearing a huge fingerprint over the lens when picking the camera up, simply because the lens is set flush against the surface of the camera and at the very edge of the body.

In outdoor conditions, the camera's limited dynamic range leads it to overexpose bright parts of the shot, in turn wiping out detail in these areas. That can be particularly annoying in portrait shots.

It's worth pointing out that there's no stabilisation system either, even if that's less of a problem with a 21 mm fixed-focus lens than at a longer focal lengths. Please though, whatever you do, don't ever use the digital zoom on this camera—it's just too painful!

Video

The TR100 films Full HD video. The limits of the lens are visible in 1920 x 1080 resolution and, on top of that, bright parts of the scene that are blindingly overexposed, darker areas that are swamped and there's a kind of halo effect around brighter objects.

And as the mono sound leaves a lot to be desired, it's safe to say that you wouldn't buy this camera for its video mode.