T3 EXCLUSIVE: Casio Exilim Pro EX-F1

When you're charging digital SLR prices for a compact camera, you'd better have a trick up your sleeve...

Luckily, Casio has 1200 of them -- that's how many frames its new EX-F1 can shoot every second, at top speed. This creates ultra-slo-mo movies that turn everyday sights like falling water into eye-popping, mind-bending visuals, albeit at low resolution (336x96-pixels).

It can rattle off full fat 6MP snaps at a memory card-punishing 60fps, and even night time scarcely slows the Casio down, with an epilepsy-inducing stroble flash that fires seven times a second. Take a time out to look at the images, and you'll find them lively and colourful, if not overly detailed.

Unlike an SLR, you can't swap the heavy, built-in 12x optical zoom lens but as it's stabilised, sharp and virtually free from distortion, it's hard to see why you'd want to (unless sluggish zooming gets on your nerves). In fact, many SLR owners will be enviously eyeing the F1's simple manual settings, intuitive click-wheel control and -- especially -- Connery-smooth full HD movie mode that can output punchy 1080i movies via HDMI to your flatscreen TV.

It's the world's fastest consumer camera, it's easy to use and it's a decent HD movie camera too -- suddenly it doesn't seem so expensive...

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