Pentax Optio W30 Digital Camera Review

With apologies to Captain Jack Sparrow and the Pirates of the Caribbean: "dead cameras take no pictures". Nothing can stop an aquatic photo opportunity quicker than an ill-timed intrusion of water or spray into your camera’s innards. For years, photographers have used plastic bags, underwater housings and purpose-built underwater cameras to permit them to shoot in, around and under the water. To the list of purpose-built cameras comes the Pentax Optio W30, a waterproof point and shoot that could have its owners singing "Yo-ho, Yo-ho, digital water shots for me".

The W30 is an improved version of the Pentax Optio W20, with the primary changes being increased depth and duration limits (up to about 10 feet and 2 hours from about 5 feet and 30 minutes in the earlier camera) and an increased maximum ISO sensitivity of 3200 (up from 1600 that was only available in a couple of modes in the W20). The camera features an aluminum body with 2.5 inch LCD monitor, 7.1 mega pixel sensor, and a 3X Pentax optical zoom lens that provides a 35mm film equivalent focal length range of 38 to 114 mm. As one would expect from a camera designed for even limited underwater work, fit and finish appear to be first-rate.]

A CLOSER LOOK

The Pentax Optio W30 has few manual controls and as such should appeal to folks who wish to minimize their involvement with capturing images. While this camera is perfectly suitable for someone who never ventures near a water body, the waterproof feature is undeniably the one which highlights it in the P&S pack, and it offers water enthusiasts a means to take an easily portable camera into wet environments that might spell doom for most other P&Ss.

Pentax provides USB and AV cables, rechargeable battery, charger and AC plug cord, camera strap and software with each camera.

The W30 has 21.9 Mb of internal memory and also accepts SD or SDHC memory cards. The internal memory space is large enough to provide a limited backup capability in the event you forget to install or your memory card(s) fail.

Camera dimensions are about 4.2 x 2.1 x 0.9 inches with a shooting weight (battery and SD memory card installed) of about 5.6 ounces.

The W30 will capture JPEG still images in 640, 1024, 2 Mb, 3 Mb, 4 Mb, 5Mb or 7 Mb sizes; 640 x 480 or 320 x 240 movies may be captured at either 15 or 30 frames per second.

Source : www.digitalcamerareview.com