Pentax Optio W20 Waterproof Camera

Updated: August 13, 2007

The Optio W20 lets you record beautiful underwater still images and movie clips, up to a maximum of 30 minutes and to adepth of 1.5 meters,* without requiring a waterproof housing. It also features special underwater shooting modes, such as the Underwater mode for still imageshooting and the Underwater Movie mode for movie recording.

The Optio W20 features a reliable dustproof body to completely shut out sand and dust, soyou can take it almost anywhere without worries — whether it’s a sandy beach or riverbank, a dusty garden, or a flour-covered kitchen. When it gets dirty or dusty, just rinse i tclean with fresh water.

Despite its slim, compact body, the Optio W20 incorporates a large, high-precision 2.5-inch LCD monitor treated with no-glare coating. It assures effortless viewing of on-screen images and menus, even under the water or on the snowfield where diffused light o ften disturbs image viewing.

DigiCamReview has a review of thePentax Optio W20 and writes, "The Pentax Optio W20 is one of the cheapest completely waterproof digital cameras available - available from only £139 you'd be tempted to think that Pentax have made compromises in order to get the price so low - thankfully this isn't the case. Pentax have done an excellent job making a compact and easy to use digital camera full of features. Some you wouldn't expect to see on a compact point and shoot, such as manual focus, custom white balance, video recording with optical zoom and digital anti-shake. The camera doesn't compromise on image quality either, with good results available, especially if you spend a lot of time outdoors or taking macro photos. The only weakness was the camera's higher than average noise when taking photos indoors. If you're looking for a compact, waterproof, 7 megapixel digital camera with a 3x optical zoom lens, and a 2.5" screen, then the Pentax Optio W20 is an excellent choice."

Pentax Optio W30 Waterproof Camera

Updated: August 13, 2007

The Optio W30 lets you record beautiful underwater still images and movie clips, up to a maximum of two hours and to a depth of three meters, without requiring a waterproof housing. Coupled with its reliable dustproof design,* you can take it almost anywhere — from beaches, rivers and oceans to snow fields, gardens and kitchens — without worrying about dirt, dust, sand, water or moisture. Its go-anywhere design makes it a perfect partner for active photographers.

Steves-digicams.com has an excellent review on the Pentax Optio W30 and writes"The new Pentax Optio 30 is an affordable compact camera that combines a 3.2 megapixel imager with a Pentax 3x optical zoom lens. When you first look at this camera, you might think the stylish body is metal, but with a touch or a tap you will find that it's really made from high-impact plastic. Even so it seems to be very well built and should hold up well under normal use. This is a simple to use camera that offers beginners and anyone a wide variety of fully- automatic record modes.
The Optio 30 is basically an automatic camera (meaning it has no shutter speed or aperture priority exposure modes), but it offers a multitude of recording options. You can set the focus area to Spot-AF or Infinity/Landscape AF. It has five white balance options to choose from. There's a full compliment of exposure metering options; matrix, center- weighted averaging and spot. You can create color, B&W or Sepia toned images and have a 3-step control over the sharpness, saturation and contrast.

I was happy to see the use of standard AA type batteries to power the Optio 30. Many of Pentax's other cameras use a proprietary lithium battery pack. This enables it to offer users a wide variety of power options. You can use alkaline or photo lithium one-use AA's, NiMH rechargeable AA cells, one-use CR-V3 lithium or RCR-V3 rechargeable lithium batteries. The battery life when using high-capacity NiMH cells or a RCR-V3 pack was very good even when using the color LCD all the time and frequently reviewing the pictures and making menu changes.

Overall the image quality in "Superior" mode is excellent. The lens produced sharp images throughout its range and the autofocus system works well in normal lighting conditions. Though it would be greatly enhanced by an addition of a focus assist lamp. I was very pleased with our outdoor test shots. They were sharp, well exposed, and when taking portraits the skin tones were very natural. Indoors the flash does a good job of illuminating small groups and the "Auto" white balance setting does very well. I was impressed with the Macro capabilities of this camera, I was able to focus on a dime (see our Sample Photos page) at about one inch from the lens.

The bottom line - the Optio 30 is a compact, very affordable ($199 at the time of this review) 3.2 megapixel camera that takes great pictures. This camera will make a great choice for anyone who is just getting into digital photography, or someone who wants a simple point-n-shoot camera. With its compact size it can easily fit into almost any size pants pocket or purse."