Pentax X70 Review – Superb mega zoom camera

Sum and Substance:

Thumbs Up:

The Pentax X70 Review tells that Photograph quality is better than mega zoom cameras, lots of options for shooting, user-friendly interface.

Thumbs Down:

HD movie quality is bad, slow performer, image quality starts dipping after ISO 200

Inside the Trunk:

A/V cable, USB cable, Carrying strap, Lens cap.

The Whiz Kid Speaks:

Pentax X70 is a 12 mega pixel camera, light sensitivity options include SO auto , ISO 50 – 6400. Special effects include brightness, fish eye, soft, color extract, color filters, sepia, black & white. Shooting programs include digital panorama, digital wide, daylight, museum, party, fireworks, food, pet, kids, baby, surf and snow, stage lighting, normal movie mode, flower, sport, night scene, night scene portrait, portrait, landscape, standard.

The camera has 6.25x digital zoom, minimum shutter speed is 4 seconds, maximum shutter speed is 1/4000 second, exposure mode include aperture priority, shutter priority, automatic, program and manual. White balance presets include tungsten light, fluorescent, daylight and shade. Videos are stored in MJPEG/AVI format, pictures are stored JPEG. Video capture resolutions options are AVI – 1280 x 720, AVI – 320 x 240, AVI – 640 x 480, AVI – 848 x 480. Image capture resolutions are JPEG 640 x 480, JPEG 1024 x 768, JPEG 2048 x 1536, JPEG 2592 x 1944, JPEG 3072 x 2304, JPEG 2992 x 2992, JPEG 4000 x 2672, JPEG 4000 x 3000. Flash modes include Red-eye reduction, Flash OFF mode, Fill-in mode, Auto mode, soft.

The camera has Zoom lens – 4.6 mm – 110.4 mm – F/2.8-5.0, minimum focus range is 15.7 inch, macro focus range is 1-50 cm, focal length is 4.6 mm – 110.4 mm. The camera has 2.7 inch TFT LCD display. Connectors on the device include DC power input, Composite video/audio output, USB.

For computer connectivity Apple Mac OS X 10.1.2 – 10.5, MS Windows Vista, MS Windows 2000, MS Windows XP. The X70 is powered by li-ion rechargeable battery.

Additional features include Triple Shake Reduction technology, Smile Detection technology, Blink Detection technology, In-camera red-eye removal, In-camera movie editing, 720p HD movie recording, Interval shooting mode, Digital image rotation, USB 2.0 compatibility, PRINT Image Matching, Face Detection AF/AE, Resizing an image, Histogram display, Cropping an image, Built-in speaker, Date/time stamp, Audio recording, DPOF support, Face zoom.

The camera has 33.6 MB of internal memory. You can put more through the include SD memory card.

Razzle Dazzle:

The camera has features of both megazoom and dSLR but it has a mega zoom camera look. The lens floats loosely on the barrel, which we didn’t like much. Right side of the camera has a rubberized handgrip which makes feels sturdy in the hand and on the back there is a thumb rest. So gripping the camera is very comfortable.

Inside Dope:

As per our Pentax X70 Review is one of those cameras which try to bridge the gap between the digital SLRs and mega zoom camera. It doesn’t have interchangeable lens like a dSLR but it does have a lot of features which might remind you of a dSLR device. However, the photo quality of the camera declines when you go beyond ISO 200 and the camera is slow performer. The camera has 24x optical zoom for the 26mm-equivalent wide-angle lens and there are a lot of shooting options which make the device fun and flexible.

The camera has features of both megazoom and dSLR however we feel it belongs more to the megazoom family. There is a 2.7 inch LCD on the back below the electronic viewfinder. There is button for toggling between the two modes. The button and the controls of the device are labeled clearly and are big which makes them easy to use. We were also delighted to find that the menu system was user-friendly, sometimes it gets intimidating with overwhelming options.

The X70 is powered by rechargeable li-ion batteries. We would have preferred alkaline batteries because you may not get to charge li-ion batteries everywhere. There are plenty of shooting options on the camera which is a treat for advanced users. It has semimanual and full-manual modes so you get a wide range of controls to play around. You can store the most frequently used settings in the user mode. If you want the camera to do more you can choose Scene modes, Auto Picture (automatic scene recognition) and Program. If you are a newbie, you can choose the Green mode which locks most of the shooting options and gives you a simplified mode for shooting.

There are lots of options for ISO sensitivity, it goes as high as ISO 6400 and ISO 3200 but the resolution will go down to 5 MP for this. For best photo results, in Auto, use ISO 50-200.

The camera is a slow performer and this is where it gets short of dSLRs. It takes 3.1 seconds to wake up and start shooting. In bright conditions the shutter lag is 0.7 second whereas in low light conditions it goes up to 1.4 seconds. Shot to shot times is 2.9 seconds without the flash and 3.1 seconds with it. The times are certainly a problem if you are shooting subjects which are in motion like children or pets. We were disappointed to find that there was no continuous shooting mode for full resolution.

Photo quality is good but like mentioned before, the quality will start declining as soon as you go beyond ISO 200. The 24x optical zoom of the camera really plays its part well in making the photos look good. At ISO 400 the details start to get blurry with noise reduction. At ISO 600 and ISO 800 the prints will look good if you are not too choosy about quality and if you keep the prints small. We recommend you to stick to ISO 200 or ISO 400, anything above that will make the resolution go down and hence the quality will suffer. The color representation of the X70 wasn’t accurate but still impressive.

The camera can record HD movies but it is very poor at just 15 frames per second. Video is best when taken at 30 frames per second at VGA mode. We would recommend you not to buy this camera if you are getting only for the HD recording capabilities because the quality is below average.

Nitty Gritty:

Our Pentax X70 Review tells that the camcorder is a really good mega zoom camera however there are a few drawbacks like lamentable HD movie mode, the photos look bad at big prints and the performance is slow. But if you want a mega zoom camera with plenty of shooting options and if your prints are limited to small size then get this camera.