Despite its point-and-shoot status, the Optio W10 includes some very useful features and settings. Options include manual white balance; interval movie mode; automatic facial recognition/focus (one of the functions of the green button); and a selection of scene modes, ranging from the standard landscape and flower presets to natural skin tone, kids, pets and two special underwater settings. I like the built-in, green-button-activated guide that briefly explains each scene mode.
The Optio W10's sluggish performance incurs some painful waits between shots. Start-up to first shot takes about 3.5 seconds, and you can expect a 3.6-second shot-to-shot time after that, even in bright light. Shutter lag runs an acceptable 0.7 second in good lighting, though it quickly balloons to 1.6 seconds in dim environments. Burst mode is mediocre, cranking out a bit more than 1.1 frames per second for 7 frames.
The Optio W10's photo quality disappoints on a few fronts as well. Exposures are generally accurate, even in harsh afternoon lighting or under the gloom of monsoon rains. Colors that are generally difficult to capture correctly reproduce well; red tulips and lavender phlox rendered red and lavender, respectively. However, images suffer from a few serious postprocessing artifacts that not only soften the edges but obscure details and make the photos look out of focus.
The Pentax Optio W10 is a good camera for extreme shooting. Its design lets it shrug off water and dirt that would destroy other cameras. Its performance and image quality leave a lot to be desired, though, and you might want to look for another camera if you're not planning to go swimming with it.
(Shorter bars indicate better performance)
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Typical shot-to-shot time | |
Time to first shot | |
Shutter lag (typical) |
(Longer bars indicate better performance)
What You'll Pay
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