I managed somehow skipped Pentax’s rugged camera when I last did a rugged roundup, but I’m definitely not missing this one. The WG-1 is the “12th rugged generation” camera from Pentax, and looks to be quite a solid piece of kit. It’s just got that rugged look too, you know?
The camera has a 14-megapixel sensor and a 5x zoom (28-140mm equivalent) F/3.5-5.5 lens, and the 2.7″ LCD on the back is a industry-standard 320×240. It’ll take 720p video and ISO goes from 80-1600, though you can reduce the megapixels and it’ll pixel-well the sensor to produce a higher ISO (up to 6400, but I wouldn’t go there).
The point of this guy is the ruggedness, though, so here’s how it holds up:
- Waterproof to 33 feet
- Dropproof to 5 feet
- Crushproof to 100 \”kilogram-force,\” which sounds like it can withstand a sit-down but not a car
- Dustproof… a side effect of waterproofing, really
- Coldproof to 14 degrees Fahrenheit — that\’s really more cool-proof, but hey
It’s also got some image stabilization and a nice LED ring on the front there for lighting or macro work. The WG-1 also has a cousin, the WG-1 GPS, which as you might expect has a GPS component for geotagging and such.
All in all it’s a nice-looking camera. The non-GPS version will cost $350, and the GPS version will cost $400. Pretty expensive, but this is probably about as nice as rugged point-and-shoots get.