Pentax Optio w60 camera review

Ok, so I’m probably one of the first in Aus to have this camera I thought id throw a review up based on my experience with the Pentax w30 which i lost in the snow last year….along with my ipod mini a year before that… these snow trips are expensive…

So I’ve waited a year and gotten the Pentax w60, played with it for a couple hours and first impressions were kind of poor.

Pulling the camera out of the box I felt kinda ripped off. The product photos used for the camera are some what misleading as the exterior of the camera does feel extremely plasticy and flimsy, nothing like the near indestructible Olympus 720SW. I’m assuming its to prevent rusting of the camera after taking it into salt water and forgetting to rinse it or for weight saving purposes to make it more portable. (and it is quite light)

After charging up the battery and sticking it in, the features and navigation are similar to what i remember of the w30 with a few minor differences and additional features. First test was high iso. It goes up to 3200 but i would not use this…. ever, unless you like painterly looking photos. I’m not sure what i was expecting the quality to be like but its horrendous (this is based on my experience with the canon 300d, 350d, 20d and 30d cameras, though these are digi slrs and should not be put in the same boat as point n shoots). 1600, I wouldnt touch either… 800 is bearable but for decent quality photos you would go with iso 400 and below, that being said the camera does perform quite well in lowlight situations.

One problem the w30 had was trying to focus in low light situations, it would take an eternity to get a focus lock on the subject indoors with incandescent lighting, this problem seems to have been solved with the new W60, after a few shots in low light situations the focus on the photos were near perfect.

The onboard effects the camera can produce are fun and can be used by people who do not have photoshop
, this kept me amused for a good 5 minutes before moving on.

The video recording is quite good for a little point and shoot, after trying to figure out what it was doing I noticed the focus was not adjusting to the zoom function. Focus on an item 2 meters away and start recording and it will not auto focus when zooming into an object 20 meters away. After scrolling through the menu for abit i discovered the auto focus while zooming option was not selected, thinking this was rather odd as it should be on as default. I turn it on and discover why its an option left unselected as default. Auto focus while video recording and zooming creates an annoying clicking noise heard throughout the whole clip while its trying to refocus on new subjects, it would be nice if they could fix this but its just a little point n shoot so i wouldnt hold your breath.

Oh, it also does time lapse videos …ie. 1 frame a minute for 2hrs….thats kinda cool.

I’ll just take their word that the camera is waterproof and take it to the snow again in 10 days to see how it performs.

Overall, it seems like a better camera than the w30 purely for the features, its about the size of a nokia mobile phone so its its good to stick in ur pocket while ur out, just dont sit on it, the build quality would be on par with the old w30 but not an indestructible camera as i had wished.

I might post sample pics and video abit later. I’m not an editor or a camera reviewer nor is this website one, but thought i would share my thoughts with the world.

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