If you're already a fan of Pentax's Optio range, you'll be pleased to learn that its third prodigy has now seen the light of day, and predictably it incorporates a lot of the latest technological improvements to feature in most modern compact digital cameras that want to be taken seriously.
It comes in a stylish, credit card-sized, black, aluminium casing and weighs a mere 4.6oz without battery and memory card installed. Using a maximum 10 effective megapixels with a 1/1.8-inch CCD, a wide light-sensitive area for superior tone reproduction and an SMC Pentax zoom lens with a 3x optical zoom, this is a high quality camera for both beginners and those who want a degree of manual control.
There's a new 2.5-inch LCD screen (with a resolution of 232,000 pixels) that has improved brightness, especially when shooting outdoors in strong sunlight. The 4-way controller is simplicity itself to operate and includes 11 Scene modes ranging from Flower, Kids, Surf & Snow to Food, Pets, Text and Frame Composite. A useful extra enhancement for first-time photographers is an explanatory text pop-up that appears over each Scene mode icon after 3 seconds.
The major selling point, though, is the emphasis on Shake Reduction. Calling on the new developments in its digital SLR cameras, Pentax has incorporated a high-accuracy gyro sensor and control algorithm into its compact SR mechanism which uses a shifting CCD system to stabilize images. A new Scene mode has been added - Digital SR - which automatically changes the camera's sensitivity according to the brightness of the subject. Although these images can accommodate a maximum ISO 3200, the detail is restricted to 5 megapixels.
There's even more to cheer about with the new Movie SR feature which creates much less blurry sequences. Video is captured at 30fps at sizes up to 640 x 480 pixels and, because it employs the DivX (MPEG-4 compliant) movie format, you can record for much longer and still end up with decent quality. Sound quality varies and it's worth mentioning that you can use the A30 as a separate voice recorder.
Amateur photographers who don't want everything on an auto setting can take comfort from the Shutter Priority, Manual (where you select both shutter speed and aperture) and Program AE (which keeps the auto exposure but allows you to choose other control options including White Balance) modes. Another welcome addition is the Face Recognition AF & AE which will detect and highlight the human faces in your photos.
The speed of operation has also been quickened and the overall detail and colour tones, brightness and contrast of the final images are well above average. Having an extra Super Macro setting means you can now get as close as 2.3 inches from your target and the rechargeable D-LI8 lithium ion battery allows for approximately 150 photos and 110 minutes of playback time.
