Casio Exilim EX-Z1200 review

Casio's latest compact camera, available in black or silver, is notable for its huge 12.1 million pixel CCD, which produces images that can be printed at poster sizes.

To complement this monstrous dot count there's some nifty technology to help you take better photos.

Camera makers increasingly use a variety of technologies to try to cancel out the tiny movements you make while taking a handheld photo, giving sharper snaps. The Exilim's light sensor (CCD) uses CCD Shift Stabilization. Face detection, another feature that's becoming fashionable at the moment, identifies the face of a subject when you're taking a portrait to ensure that part of the image gets the best focus and exposure, avoiding the common problem of pictures where your friend is out of focus but the wall behind is perfectly sharp.

Among all these innovations are plenty of conventional features. There are lots of automatic modes, and shooting is pretty foolproof, although the menu system could be clearer. You can also control the camera manually by selecting the shutter speed or aperture. The 3x zoom lens is typical on this kind of compact, as is the large 2.8-inch LCD screen on the back to compose and review your pictures. The body feels very sturdy, partly because it's quite heavy.

We found image quality very good, with true-to-life colour. Even in flash shots, skin tones looked natural. The big worry with cameras that have more and more pixels crammed into their tiny CCDs is digital noise, the speckling effect caused by randomly incorrect pixels. The Casio's pictures did show some graininess when viewed close-up, but in general we were pleasantly surprised.

Not everyone needs 12 megapixels, and it's no guarantee of quality: a more expensive camera could capture better images with fewer cells. But more dots may appeal if you fancy printing big images, or having the flexibility to crop into small areas of photos and still have adequate detail. If so, the Casio should be on your shopping list - but 12 megapixel cameras from other makers are on the way.