Casio QV-5700

A table of all the full digital images taken with the cameras

Using a Canon lens and sharing a chunky, rectangular design, the 5-megapixel QV-5700 bears more than a passing resemblance to the PowerShot G5. The G5 has a 4x optical zoom against Casio's 3x, though, and several other features, such as time-lapse shooting, are missing.

This is no surprise considering the £86 price difference between the two cameras, and there's still plenty to like about the QV-5700. For a start, it offers bulb photography and manually selectable sensitivity up to ISO 800, while flash modes include front and rear curtain for creative night shots. Like the Canon, it supports Microdrives, but a mere 16MB CompactFlash card is included for six shots at maximum resolution. We found it all too easy to insert the card wrongly, too, and the camera wouldn't recognise that a card was installed.

The Best Shot mode has five preset scenes and you can add your own. One interesting setting is Soft Focus, which releases the shutter twice for artistic effect. Playback options are comprehensive to say the least. The QV-5700 allows you to scroll through panoramas, fast- forward through movies and zoom images to 5x.

The main shooting modes are controlled by a slightly fiddly dual-ringed dial. One ring has settings for panorama, movies, continuous drive and exposure bracketing, while the other selects the exposure mode from fully auto to fully manual. A multifunction dial on the right allows easy selection of focus, white balance, metering and Best Shot presets.

In addition to the optical viewfinder, there's a high-resolution 1.8in LCD that has a decent refresh rate. To conserve power, Casio has included an LCD status panel so you don't have to use the main LCD to check settings.

In our controlled tests, the QV-5700 excelled. Good exposures indoors and outdoors were matched by neutral colours and incredible resolution. Noise was almost as low as the Sony DSC-V1 and there were no chromatic aberrations to speak of. Only a mild greenish cast when using auto white balance and slight over-exposure on the indoor shot marred the otherwise clean record.

However, in real-world use, the Casio proved disappointing. Not only were the slow menus frustrating to use, but the slow startup time of over six seconds meant several missed shots. The worst problem was the QV-5700's inability to focus in most situations. On the rare occasions where a green focus light appeared, photos still weren't as sharp as they should have been. This led to many blurred shots, even outdoors in bright sunlight. Add to this the fact the Casio is the only camera not to have audio capabilities and it pales even more.