Pentax Optio W60 Waterproof 10MP Digital Camera with 5x Wide Angle Optical Zoom (Ocean Blue) cheap price
Pentax Optio W60 Waterproof 10MP Digital Camera with 5x Wide Angle Optical Zoom (Ocean Blue)
Rating:
List Price: $ 299.95
best Price :$ 150.00
This best price Oct 23, 2011 @ 19:44 please check price update(price will lower or up)
- 10.0-megapixel CCD captures enough detail for photo-quality 18 x 24-inch prints
- Waterproof to 13 feet; coldproof to sub-zero temperatures
- 5x optical zoom; 2.5-inch LCD screen
- 720p HD movie capture (15fps)
- Capture images to SD/SDHC memory cards (not included)
Technical Details
- Brand Name: Pentax
- Model: B0019V2CW8
- Optical Sensor Resolution: 10 MP
- Optical Sensor Technology: CCD
- Optical zoom: 5 x
- Maximum Aperature Range: F/3.5-5.5
- Minimum focal length: 5 millimeters
- Maximum focal length: 25 millimeters
- Lens Type: Zoom lens
- Optical Sensor Size: 1/2.33″
- Included Flash Type: Built-in flash
- Display Size: 2.5 inches
- Light Sensitivity: ISO 50 – 6400, ISO auto (50-1600), ISO auto (50-6400)
- Image types: JPEG
- Shooting Modes: Frame movie mode
- Exposure Control Type: Program, bulb, automatic, manual, aperture-priority, shutter-priority
- Viewfinder Type: LCD
- Width: 3.9 inches
- Depth: 1 inches
- Height: 2.2 inches
- Weight: 4.4 Ounces
List Price:$ 299.95
best Price :$ 150.00
This best price Oct 23, 2011 @ 19:44 please check price update(price will lower or up)
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about 1 year ago
Great “Fun” Camera,
UPDATE: This review was updated on 9/1/08 to reflect the announcement of the Olympus 1050SW.
I am a self confessed camera freak. I have owned the Pentax WPi, W10, W30, and now, the W60. My other primary cameras are the Canon SD 870 (with waterproof housing for diving) and a Canon SLR system with L series lenses, etc. I live in Hawaii and I travel for a living and I can say that without a doubt, the Pentax W series of cameras have been my “go to” cameras for any activities that involve water, snow, sand, or dirt. They take A LOT of abuse even if they don’t advertise that fact like Olympus. For optical quality in a “friendly” environment when I don’t want to lug my SLR, I prefer my Canon SD 870 which has noticeably better optics.
Like many people who somehow trashed their previous W series camera, I have been waiting over a year for the W30 upgrade and I can report that all in all, the W60 is a worthy upgrade to the W30 if only for the 28mm lens. In addition, it’s lighter, the screen is brighter, and it’s got a couple of useful software upgrades. I’ve been using the camera for a month now.
Make no mistake, this is a “fun” outdoors camera. If you’re not going to take your camera in the water, to the beach, or mountain biking stop reading now and find a camera with better optics. The W60 is just o.k. and certainly no worse than the W30. As for the barrel distortion at 28mm, it’s probably just slightly worse than my Canon SD 870 which means that the distortion is there and is noticeable, but for a group shot at the beach or trying to get the full length of a kayak AND an isle in the background, I’ll live with the ever so slight distortion. You can always just click the lens down to 37mm and eliminate the distortion just like any other compact.
I’ll also confess that I’m a Mac user and therefore don’t know how to read manuals. Because of this, I find the “smile detect” and “blink detect’ features amazingly annoying although they seem to work as long as your subjects are not wearing sunglasses. Fortunately, for illiterate and/or lazy idiots such as myself, you can ignore most features and easily find the important ones like underwater white balance.
Here’s what I like and dislike about this particular model.
LIKES
1) Nothing beats not worrying about sand, water, dirt, or mud. I had the Olympus 1030SW for two days before sand screwed up the retractable lens cover (great idea, poor execution which has been addressed on the recently announced 1050SW). Also, if you let your kids take photos like I do, you can worry less about camera damage when one of them inevitably throws your camera at the other one or tries to hit them over the head with it in the pool.
2) 28mm lens. Wide angle (vs. the typical 38mm) is an option I’d rather have than not. Also, there is a crazy “wide” feature that’s a bit different than panoramic stitch that actually works pretty well. In a nutshell, two portrait shots are stitched in camera into a 5MP 21mm image. It’s by no means “publishable” quality, but I’ve actually been having quite a bit of fun with it.
DISLIKES
1) HD movie clips. I was very disappointed that the 720p movie clips are only 15 fps. My old Canon S80 had the same specs and I find the jerkiness at 15 fps too distracting. The initial press release (specs since updated) didn’t disclose this. Oh well. I’d still buy it. 640 movie clips at 30 fps are as clean as expected and the shake reduction works fairly well (but reduces the frame to something less than 28mm). Also, a note on reviewers who complain about sound recorded from the focusing drive, switch to infinity focus which works fine in 90% of all situations and that annoying sound will be eliminated).
2) Noticeable barrel distortion at 28mm. Like I said earlier, better to have the option available and zoom in when able. Even at 28mm, your shot won’t be ruined. Also, if you have a mother-in-law you can cleverly position her at the end of the frame and the distortion will make her look slightly thinner (in case she accuses your SLR of making her look fat).
3) Still no travel charger included or officially available (which I find inexcusable) although inelegant third party solutions exist online (and the multi battery use ones still work even though they’ve changed the battery model).
4) No external user replaceable lens protecter. Come on Pentax engineers. How hard would it be to design an exterior casing that allowed for a user replaceable transparent protective “filter” like an SLR. There’s a reason I’ve bought four models. I trash them.
Now for the important feature: Underwater Imaging
If you want a camera for scuba diving stop reading now and go buy yourself a Canon with any of their factory built cases. This is not a diving camera.
If you want a camera…
Read more
Was this review helpful to you?
|about 1 year ago
Great “Fun” Camera,
UPDATE: This review was updated on 9/1/08 to reflect the announcement of the Olympus 1050SW.
I am a self confessed camera freak. I have owned the Pentax WPi, W10, W30, and now, the W60. My other primary cameras are the Canon SD 870 (with waterproof housing for diving) and a Canon SLR system with L series lenses, etc. I live in Hawaii and I travel for a living and I can say that without a doubt, the Pentax W series of cameras have been my “go to” cameras for any activities that involve water, snow, sand, or dirt. They take A LOT of abuse even if they don’t advertise that fact like Olympus. For optical quality in a “friendly” environment when I don’t want to lug my SLR, I prefer my Canon SD 870 which has noticeably better optics.
Like many people who somehow trashed their previous W series camera, I have been waiting over a year for the W30 upgrade and I can report that all in all, the W60 is a worthy upgrade to the W30 if only for the 28mm lens. In addition, it’s lighter, the screen is brighter, and it’s got a couple of useful software upgrades. I’ve been using the camera for a month now.
Make no mistake, this is a “fun” outdoors camera. If you’re not going to take your camera in the water, to the beach, or mountain biking stop reading now and find a camera with better optics. The W60 is just o.k. and certainly no worse than the W30. As for the barrel distortion at 28mm, it’s probably just slightly worse than my Canon SD 870 which means that the distortion is there and is noticeable, but for a group shot at the beach or trying to get the full length of a kayak AND an isle in the background, I’ll live with the ever so slight distortion. You can always just click the lens down to 37mm and eliminate the distortion just like any other compact.
I’ll also confess that I’m a Mac user and therefore don’t know how to read manuals. Because of this, I find the “smile detect” and “blink detect’ features amazingly annoying although they seem to work as long as your subjects are not wearing sunglasses. Fortunately, for illiterate and/or lazy idiots such as myself, you can ignore most features and easily find the important ones like underwater white balance.
Here’s what I like and dislike about this particular model.
LIKES
1) Nothing beats not worrying about sand, water, dirt, or mud. I had the Olympus 1030SW for two days before sand screwed up the retractable lens cover (great idea, poor execution which has been addressed on the recently announced 1050SW). Also, if you let your kids take photos like I do, you can worry less about camera damage when one of them inevitably throws your camera at the other one or tries to hit them over the head with it in the pool.
2) 28mm lens. Wide angle (vs. the typical 38mm) is an option I’d rather have than not. Also, there is a crazy “wide” feature that’s a bit different than panoramic stitch that actually works pretty well. In a nutshell, two portrait shots are stitched in camera into a 5MP 21mm image. It’s by no means “publishable” quality, but I’ve actually been having quite a bit of fun with it.
DISLIKES
1) HD movie clips. I was very disappointed that the 720p movie clips are only 15 fps. My old Canon S80 had the same specs and I find the jerkiness at 15 fps too distracting. The initial press release (specs since updated) didn’t disclose this. Oh well. I’d still buy it. 640 movie clips at 30 fps are as clean as expected and the shake reduction works fairly well (but reduces the frame to something less than 28mm). Also, a note on reviewers who complain about sound recorded from the focusing drive, switch to infinity focus which works fine in 90% of all situations and that annoying sound will be eliminated).
2) Noticeable barrel distortion at 28mm. Like I said earlier, better to have the option available and zoom in when able. Even at 28mm, your shot won’t be ruined. Also, if you have a mother-in-law you can cleverly position her at the end of the frame and the distortion will make her look slightly thinner (in case she accuses your SLR of making her look fat).
3) Still no travel charger included or officially available (which I find inexcusable) although inelegant third party solutions exist online (and the multi battery use ones still work even though they’ve changed the battery model).
4) No external user replaceable lens protecter. Come on Pentax engineers. How hard would it be to design an exterior casing that allowed for a user replaceable transparent protective “filter” like an SLR. There’s a reason I’ve bought four models. I trash them.
Now for the important feature: Underwater Imaging
If you want a camera for scuba diving stop reading now and go buy yourself a Canon with any of their factory built cases. This is not a diving camera.
If you want a camera…
Read more
Was this review helpful to you?
|about 1 year ago
It’s all about trade-off,
Clearly, this is not a camera for everybody. It’s designed for those outdoor enthusiasts who’s willing to trade the picture quality for the taking anywhere feature. I wish I could have a compact camera that can be used anywhere but still has DSLR picture quality — but that camera doesn’t exist!
If the underwater capability is important to you, then there are not so many choices out there — and the only two get head to head are Olympus 1030 and the Pentax W60. Both are 10M pixels which I don’t think it’s really needed — you can’t fully use the 10M capability because of the lens quality. Some important difference:
- Olympus can go 30 ft deep, Pentax 10 ft.
- Olympus is crash proof, Pentax is not
- Olympus’s lens is 28-105, Pentax is 28-140
- Both can take video of 640×480, up to the size of the flash card (Olympus may need a firmware upgrade), but Pentax can take 1280×720 in 15 fps.
- Olympus can’t use zoom during video taking, Pentax can, but records the zoom sound as well.
- Pentax has slightly better picture quality, but little noisier.
- Pentax uses SD/SDHC card, Olympus uses xdpicture card, which is more expensive.
Finally I decided to go with the Pentax.
Things I like besides the under water capability:
- Feature rich. There are 24 different scene mode, a good fit to novice users, and there are also face detection, blink detection, smile detection and some on-camera editing capability. You can also do the slide-show on camera.
- Easy to follow interface. I learned to use more than 90% of the functions without even reading the manual.
- Macro that closes up to 1cm, not so many cameras are capable of that.
- Picture color is normally good.
- Live histogram view
Things I don’t like:
- Poor low light performance, very noisy
- The so-called image stabilizing is just to bump up the ISO, which cause noisier image
- Below average image quality (comparing other point and shoot)
- Metering/White Balance/EV Adjustment only available in the P mode! This is my biggest complaint. I don’t know what’s in Pentax engineer’s mind. I can live with no AP/SP/manual mode, but I still need these adjustments!
- No lens cover. Even though there is a protective layer in the front, so one can’t touch the real lens, but that layer can still get dirty and I’m also afraid to simply put the camera in my pocket with other stuff.
With all that said, am I returning the camera? The hell no! I have my DSLR for better image quality, but I still need a compact one that I can bring with me on trips to ski, beach, or even snorkeling!
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