July 25, 2006 – Pentax Imaging Co. announced yesterday the introduction of their newest compact camera, the Optio S7. For just under $300, the 7-megapixel point-and-shoot will be available in September.
The new 7.0 megapixel Optio S7 comes equip with the increasingly popular face-recognition auto focus-auto exposure function, similar to Nikon’s face-priority technology in their Coolpix models and Fuji’s face detection S6000fd compact camera, released earlier this month. Pentax’s version, the Face Tracker face-recognition, promises to focus subjects without harsh shadows, while providing properly exposed backgrounds, according to today’s Pentax news release. “This useful function automatically detects the position of the subjects anywhere in the photo frame and then adjusts the focus and optimizes the exposure for the detected position,” stated the release.
Following the 6-megapixel Optio S6, the new Pentax Optio S7 is fitted with a 3x optical zoom lens and a 2.5-inch non-glare LCD screen, composed of 232,000 pixels. The camera has a MPEG-4 DivX movie mode that captures at 30fps, however, the VGA is not compatible with Macs, according to the release. The S7 also comes with an ISO sensitivity of 1600 and a blur reduction high ISO function to reduce the effects of camera shake in low light situations.
The Optio S7 has 16 shooting modes and 15 playback modes.
The Pentax Optio S7 is the first of the Pentax’s compacts to accept SDHC memory cards, capable of storing two or more GB of memory, with an additional 23 MB of internal memory.
