I've had a W90 since August this year and have loved it.
Previously I owned a Casio EX-Z850 which I bought specifically because it had (limited) manual control over aperture, shutter speed, etc. When it was time to replace it, I decided to leave the "proper" shooting to my DSLR and get a compact that could take the rough and tumble and go places my DLSR couldn't or shouldn't.
I run regularly, and since August my W90 has "done" about 565km. These days it accompanies me on all my runs and hikes, single-handedly supporting my running/photography blog.
Some of the better (in my mind) images:
And a few showcasing abilities:
Built-in panorama mode
These were all shot using the camera's built in panorama mode, which I find myself using regularly when out on a run. Check out the flickr link to see it in full (very large!) size.
Underwater
Wet conditions
Apologies for the missed focus, I was treading water!
For straight-from-camera, unprocessed images see my blog:
The Photographer's Biathlon
A few things I've found:
- Despite online reports to the contrary, for me, battery life has been very good.
- Noise isn't a problem at low ISOs, but it looks
terrible when present. I commonly shoot with my K20D at ISO1600 - ISO3200 because I like the look of the noise, but the noise from the W90 is
particularly ugly. If there was a choice, I would rather higher noise if they could make it look more like that from my K20D.
- The camera is fully waterproof, but if it needs to be that waterproof, typically I'm totally wet as well, and water on the lens is hard to remove and ruins photos.
- The flotation arm-band is awesome and well worth the investment if you'll be taking it swimming.
- The macro mode works well, but it certainly needs those front LEDs because you
will be blocking natural light sources if you're getting that close.
- I was fairly unimpressed with the "HD" video, it's a good thing I couldn't care less about that feature.
- The built-in 3-photo panorama mode generally works great. I noticed that the bundled software was from Arcsoft who make great stand-alone PC panorama software, so I'm guess that has something to do with it!
Feel free to ask any specific questions and I'll try to get right back to you. Apologies for all the large photos in this post!
Cheers,
Joe