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I bought this camera mainly for the high speed video capability, and I have not been disappointed. This camera's high speed video capabilities are far and away the best you can buy in this price range. In fact, I don't think there is anything on the market right now that can match these abilities even if you were willing to pay 2 or 3 times the price of the EX-F1.
High speed video
The closest competitors to the EX-F1 (besides Casio's other high speed video camera, the EX-FH20) are Sony's HD camcorders that can record 240 frames per second (although not in HD) for a whopping three seconds. I've never used one of these cameras, but I have to imagine the 3-second clip length limitation is quite cumbersome to work with. The EX-F1, by contrast, is limited only by a 4 GB file size cap. High speed video (at all three speeds) takes up about 2MB/sec of recording, meaning you can record for about 30 minutes in high speed mode before you reach that 4GB file size limit. Of course, it would take 300 minutes, or 5 hours, to watch back the whole clip if you were shooting 300 fps. That's a limitation I can live with.
The 1200 fps resolution is pretty small and pixilated, but I'm still glad to see that speed is available. I use it sometimes and the results can be quite interesting even if they are thumbnail-size.
One thing you may or may not be aware of is the amount of light required to shoot high speed video. High speed video, by definition, requires very fast shutter speeds. You must use at least 1/300th, 1/600th, or 1/1200th shutter speed to shoot 300, 600, or 1200 frames per second, respectively. Basically that means you need very bright lights or daylight. I can shoot 300 fps indoors with the aperture wide open at ISO 400 using 600W of light pointed directly on the subject. Anything less than that and your video will come out dark and/or grainy. See my youtube video on the subject called "Casio EX-F1 noise level test":
High speed video downsides
I use this camera to shoot high speed video of things like skateboarding. I'll set up the camera on a tripod, start recording, and go try a trick. Often it takes lots of tries to land it, and if it takes me five minutes to land my trick, then I want to play it back to see how it looks. But the only way to get to the end of a video clip is to fast forward through the whole thing, and when you shoot at 300 fps, "fast forward" means about half real speed. That means I'd have to literally sit for ten minutes waiting for the camera to fast forward to the end of the clip so I can see what I just recorded. It would be really handy if there was some way to quickly skip to the part of the video you want to see, like if you could roll the dial and each click would jump 2.5% of the way though the clip, so 40 clicks would get you to the end of a video of any length. But there is no feature like that. Is someone from Casio reading this? Please add this feature or something like it.
Overall, though, I'd say this is an outstanding camera for high speed video and you won't find anything even close to it in a consumer level price range.
HD video
The high definition video looks great, but the problem is I can't edit the highest resolution (1080P) video. Sony Vegas will read 1080P AVCHD files from Sony and Panasonic cameras, but not Casio. I just discovered today that Sony Vegas 6.0a will, however, read 720P HD video from this camera. Since before today I didn't know of any way to edit my HD videos, I have shot very few. I have noticed that the focusing tends to "hunt" a little bit even when shooting in broad daylight. For me, HD video is a bonus because my primary usage of the camera is for high speed video.
Photos:
It may sound strange, but I have taken very few photos with this camera. I have a Canon 350D DSLR and also a Canon 5D DSLR, so I didn't buy the Casio for photos. And it's a good thing, because if your primary interest is photos, you can do better for $1,000 (try a Canon digital rebel). Of course, if you think you will have a lot of usage for the rapid-fire full resolution stills, you won't find another camera that can match that. It looks like a pretty cool feature, and I've tried it out just to see how it works, but I haven't had any real usage for that feature yet.
The macro capability is decent, but it captures the closest photos when the zoom is at its widest angle and you put the camera about an inch from your subject. Needless to say, it is quite difficult to light the subject when the camera lens is looming an inch away. You can move back a bit and zoom in, but the closest focus distance quickly increases as you zoom in, meaning you can't get as close of a macro shot.
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