February 14, 2005 – Pentax announced the Optio 50 digital camera yesterday. The 5-megapixel camera is built for beginners, with its five shooting modes and a Simple Mode. This camera has all of the basics: 3x optical zoom, a 1.8-inch LCD screen, and PictBridge compatibility. The Optio 50 will be available in April for £149.99, which is roughly equivalent to $280 USD.
The 3.6 x 2.4 x 1.1-inch Pentax Optio 50 has a 1.8-inch LCD screen with 130,000 pixels of resolution. This is coupled with an optical viewfinder in a camera body that weighs 6.3 ounces with the battery and SD card. A memory card is not included in the packaging, as the Optio 50 comes with 12 MB of internal memory.
A total of 5.2 megapixels on the ½.5-inch CCD puts out still images in four image sizes, all formatted to a 4:3 ratio. The 3x optical zoom lens has a decent aperture range from f/2.8-f/4.8 and an additional 4x digital zoom. The Pentax Optio 50 also has a QVGA movie mode that shoots at 20 frames per second up to the capacity of the 12 MB internal memory or optional SD card.
