Casio Exilim Pro EX-P700

A small camera in a big camera's category, the EX-P700 is one of the smallest cameras in its class. It's almost small enough to fit in a pocket. Don't be fooled, however, it combines most of the features of a high-end professional camera into a compact body.

Our personal favourites were the variety of bracketing and high-speed capture functions, which allow multiple shots to be taken in very small periods, providing fram-by-frame analysis of a specific action (such as a golf swing).

It has all the standard features you would expect of a camera at this price, including manual aperture, shutter speed, white balance and flash controls. There is also a "best shot" setting, where you choose from a list of predetermined configurations by selecting the picture that most looks like the intended result. Your own configuration can also be saved, which is great if regularly shooting in the same environments.

Pictures are taken at 7.2 megapixels, and they were as good as those taken by most other models with this resolution. They were not quite as sharp as those produced by 8 megapixel cameras in this category, but for many the extra cost would not justify the increase in quality.

One big negative with the EX-P700 is that it does not support the RAW format, offering only JPEG and TIFF file formats.

While it can record video, the camera only supports 320 x 240 video at 15fps. It does have unlimited video recording (many cameras limit the length) - however, it suffers from the long load and save times that seem to plague many Casio models.

The camera itself looks great. It has a solid, stainless steel exterior and feels sturdy without being overly heavy.