Pentax's new Optio point-and-shoots are alive with the sound of megapixels

Wednesday, January 23rd, 2008

Devin Coldewey is a Seattle-based writer and photographer. He has written for the TechCrunch network since 2007. Some posts he’d like you to read: The Dangers of Externalizing Knowledge | Generation i | Surveillant Society | Choose Two | Frame Wars | The User’s Manifesto | Our Great Sin His personal website is coldewey.cc. → Learn More

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If you’re in the market for a new pocket camera, you could do worse than a Pentax. My friend just bought one from the old generation and she likes it, but when she sees these she’ll be mad. Click the link below for the whole menagerie, in arbitrary order since there are no prices and some are better than others in different ways. All the cameras have USB 2.0 high speed interfaces and good stuff like face recognition built in.

Optio S12 (pictured above)

5.3 oz, 12 megapixels (special 1.7″ sensor with primary color separation), 3x optical zoom (come on now), 64-3200 ISO, 2.5″ LCD

Optio E50
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5.8 oz, 8 megapixels (2.5″ sensor), 3x optical zoom, 100-1600 ISO, 2.4″ LCD

Optio M50

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We have a price on this one, $230. It’s got the nicer zoom and the best ISO range, so it’s probably the high end.

Optio A40
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5.3 oz, 12 megapixels (that 1.7″ sensor again), 3x optical zoom, 50-1600 ISO, 2.5″ LCD

I’m not sure what I’d go with. The Olympus FE-3xx series we saw yesterday may actually be a better deal from what I’m seeing here on paper, but in the end the true test is image quality and usability, not to mention price. We’ll keep you guys updated.

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