Pentax Life

Last week we had two reviews of Samsung GX-10. One from DCViews - very positive: “…built like a tank with solid well-placed buttons and dials and handy weatherproofing. It provides fast performance with excellent results and comfortable handling.” And another from ThinkCamera - mostly positive but with a more critical attitude: “…there are some control buttons and dials that are awkward and not as positive as might be desired. It’s also noisy (actually camera noise rather than image noise)” ThinkCamera’s overall verdict is 9 out of 10 with 8 for design and picture quality and the only 10 for battery life.

In the June 2007 issue of British magazine What Digital Camera two newest Optios were reviewed. E30 called good budget option with a score 79%, and T30 prised for its useful features but the average image quality stopped T30’s score on the 84% mark.

Malaysian Star recommends Pentax Optio M30 for those “who just wants to take snaps of the family and other general shooting without having to bother with lots of modes and technical stuff… …ISO1600 and 3200 are a joke“, concludes Star’s contributor Tan Kit Hoong.

Megapixel.net have reviewed Pentax’ flagship point & shoot Optio A30 that was very popular among reviewers this year (see “Related Posts” section for more tests and reviews). A30 was found a good overall with a bit of barrel distortion, vignetting and conner softness at wide angle zoom position. Indoors test shots in the mixed light conditions looks nice. Chromatic aberrations is easily detectable at outdoor test - which is pretty common for point & shoots.

Megapixel.net marked it 9 out of 10 for functionality and 8 out of 10 for photographic qualities. In addition to issues mentioned above just two “negatives” were mentioned: only two aperture settings and underpowered built-in flash. Strong sides of the A30 includes good resolution, metering and color rendition, excellent built quality and effective Shake Reduction system.

Last week was reach in different Optios reviews. DigitalCameraReview.com have tested A30 and E30. The first one was praised because of its color reproduction and overall image quality, shake reduction and manual controls in an easily portable compact body. And the second one is named a great choice for first time camera buyers.

Tech Digest take a look on T30: “The T30 is a great point and shoot camera that’s easy to use and creates great pictures. It’s reasonably priced at £189.99 for a 7.1 megapixel camera and it’s small enough to carry with you most places you go. The touch sensitive screen is very simple to operate, although it is prone to greasy marks after a little use.“

Steve reviewed M30 (he called it average) and the Pentax’s most popular point & shoot - waterproofed W30: “the Pentax Optio W30 is yet another “Cool” underwater model. It can produce nice photos along with good shooting performance, loads of exposure modes, and lets not forget the added versatility of being able to take pictures underwater! At about $US250 or less, I feel the Optio W30 offers a great value for a camera in this category, and is sure to be a very popular digicam this year.“

The Imaging Resource have posted Pentax K10D user report by Shawn Barnett. He named K10D the unique camera tuned for advanced photographer. Also he discovered an interesting thing with it - the phantom pixels phenomenon.

Camera Labs have tested K10D and compared it to Nikon D80, D200, Canon 30D and Sony A100. “…in our view, the D80 simply out-performed the K10D in day-to-day use.” Canon 30D found to be better than K10D becouse of “magnesium alloy body, 5fps continuous shooting, superior metering and again more consumer-friendly output using the default settings.” Even Sony outperformed K10D in their review: “In practice we found the Sony A100’s Super SteadyShot provided slightly more effective than the K10D’s Shake Reduction.“

DigitalCameraReview have published Optio W30 - latest Pentax waterproof point & shoot - user report. Japanese review of Pentax Optio A30 appeared in Impress Watch. And another new Optio - M30 - have been tested by TrustedReviews.

ePhotoZine have reviewed Pentax Optio T30 - pretty unique point-and-shoot camera with 3″ touch-screen LCD and just two buttons on its back. ePhotoZine contributor Duncan Evans liked T30’s operation simplicity, excellent build quality of stylish metal body and wide ISO range. Disliked high noise on ISO3200 sensitivity settings, unimpressive macro mode and 3x only optical zoom. Overall rating is 7 out of 10.

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First of all, another big reviewer has put his hands on the K10D. Jeff Keller of DCRP has posted Pentax K10D review - and Samsung GX-10 is on the schedule.

Jeff liked K10D’s built quality and size, but complained the out of the box JPEG softness and “dull colors“:

Shooting JPEGs straight out of the box isn’t a good idea, as they’ll be soft and dull in color. You can resolve this by shooting RAW, increasing in-camera sharpening/contrast/saturation, or just using the bright image tone setting. Once you do I think you’ll be more than pleased with the K10’s output.

The effort to gain more film-like look played a bad joke on Pentax this time. Frankly, it’s more marketing than technology. Pentax should work more to spread its vision of image quality.

Russian gadgets review website iXBT published K100D test (auto translation). It’s a bit weird, because the author experienced lens installation difficulties. In his words the bayonet of K100D is too tight and got scratches after several lens changes. Also author disliked poor autofocus and continuous shooting performance, uncomfortable menu and focusing point selection.

Pentax A20 gets “Recommended (just)” from the DPReview. Simon Joinson (the review author) looks some disappointed by the A20 improvements over previous Pentax’s compact digicam flagship A10: “So does the A20 deliver the necessary improvements? The sad answer is not nearly enough.” Performance and ergonomics got the lowest marks from him (6.0 and 7.0 respectively), however the build quality rated pretty high - 8.5.

Impress Watch reviewed the new Pentax Optio M30 (auto translation) - overall impressions are good with the special praises to Auto Exposure. A load of real life samples included.

Pentax makes a load of pre-PMA announcements. Today the Optio *30 line of compact digital cameras completed with the flagship W30 and A30 models. Optio W30 is getting even more waterproof making it possible to use camera underwater at depths of 3 meters continuously for 2 hours. The exterior is also significantly changed - W30 is now available in three colors. Camera powererd by the new D-LI63 rechargeable battery.

A30 has less changes. It’s also available in two colors (silver and black), Digital SR function can take fixed 5 megapixels shots at ISO 3200. A30 uses the old D-LI8 Li-Ion battery.

User dmk224 from DPreview forums disassembled the old *ist film SLR and last year A20 point & shoot, and then put them together to make a descent digital SLR. I guess he’s got a lot of spare parts left over. Thus the A20’s 1/1.8″ sensor is five times smaller than 35mm film, 300mm lens becomes the 1500mm spotting scope - perfect birding tool. Here is some samples.

Pentax Imaging has announced two new compact digital cameras in the Optio line: affordable M30 and stylish T30. The most important thing is that M30 will be juiced by the new D-LI63 Li-Ion battery, so E30 is now the only Pentax point & shoot with AA batteries.

Pentax Optio M30

M30 is equipped with the new 7.1 Mpix (7.38 total megapixels) 1/2.5″ sensor which is just 0.1 Mpix bigger than in the previous model. Getting rid of AA batteries helps Pentax engineers make the new camera 0.3″ thinner and 1 oz (28 grams) lighter.

Pentax Optio T30

T30 also gets the new 7.1 Mpix sensor and D-LI63 battery which came to replace the old D-LI8. 3″ touchscreen remains the same as in previous T20 model.

Both cameras offers new functions such as Face Recognition Auto Focus and Auto Exposure to assure properly exposed portraits and a high ISO Digital Shake Reduction mode.

Steve’s DigiCams reviewed Pentax Optio S7 - the last model in the Pentax’s S series of ultra-compact point & shoot cameras. Steve was impressed by the image quality of such a small camera, ergonomics deserved some kudos as well. “Indoors is where this little camera shines, except when needing the flash… …it did work very well when shooting portraits from about 4 or 5 feet. People shots showed sharp facial features, good flash exposure along with great natural skin tones. Portrait photography is one of the S7’s best uses.” But the camera’s shooting performance found to be below average.