News from CES2007, Casio has unveiled ‘the world’s slimmest digital camera with a 7X optical zoom lens’ - the Exilim EX-V7 - at CES today. The new ultra-slim (just 25.1mm thick) 7.2 megapixel camera features Casio’s CCD shift system, H.264 MPEG movies and a 38-266mm equiv. optical zoom.

Impressive stuff.

I’m a great fan of the Casio Exilim and was waiting for them to bring out something with a longer zoom and a real CCD shift technology for image stabilising as their ISO boosting tactics just didn’t cut it with me.

Four blur reduction technologies with new CCD shift system

• New CCD shift system actually mechanically compensates for camera shake.
• Automatically analyzes the velocity and vector of a moving subject and sets the most appropriate ISO sensitivity and shutter speed.
• Anti Shake DSP reduces blur due to shaky hands and subject movement, using high shutter speeds and high sensitivity settings.
• Electronic camera shake compensation function eliminates blur when shooting in movie mode.

Newly designed EXILIM Engine 2.0 image processor

• “Auto Tracking AF” function follows moving subjects, keeping them continuously in focus until the photo is taken.
• Tonal control lets users keep bright areas of the scene bright by limiting the occurrence of dark pixels.
• Offers ability to selectively eliminate noise in designated color regions, such as the sky.
• Boasts faster image processing functions that enable instantaneous color correction or angle adjustment.

Looks good to me, that’s for sure! It might be a good choice over the Canon Powershot A710 IS as this camera has similar features and manual controls but is much more compact and has a little bit of extra zoom.

I’ll really need to check out the image stabiliser though as it’s the first time I’ve seen one from Casio.

I’d estimate this should be around RM1600-1800.