Manual Control Options
The Pentax E30 does not offer manual exposure control, but it allows exposure compensation, manual ISO, manual focus and manual white balance.
Focus
Auto Focus
The Optio E30 focused well when we examined it at CES. We couldn't test it in truly low light, but the lighting in the cavernous yet intimate Las Vegas Convention Center was far from ideal. It appears to have three sensors in a row across the middle of the frame, but it can be set to spot focus on the center. The user can freeze focus by keeping the shutter release pressed halfway.
Manual Focus
It was a little surprising to find manual focus on a camera as pared-down as the Optio E30. Still more surprising was its good performance.
The user controls focus with the 4-way controller and can monitor a distance scale superimposed on the live view. A highly magnified portion of the image fills the screen and image noise is controlled well enough that focus is pretty obvious. It snaps into focus. Having the image enlarged prevents the user from seeing exactly how the picture is framed.
The E30 also offers an infinity lock which is useful for night landscapes and fireworks.
Exposure
The Optio E30 does not have any manual exposure modes or even partially manual ones. It offers exposure compensation, but that's accessed through the menu system, so tweaking exposure is a pretty clunky process.
Metering
The Optio E30 offers only multisegment metering. The camera takes several separate readings across the frame and uses an algorithm to determine the best exposure by comparing the various readings. Such systems are supposed to be able to identify backlighting and other tricky situations, but we could not test how successful the E30 system is. Check our full review for more information.
White Balance
In addtion to automatic white balance, the Optio E30 offers presets for daylight, shade, tungsten and fluorescent light. We couldn't test the presets in the pallid yet luxurious lighting of the Las Vegas Convention Center. The E30 also has a custom white balance feature. We couldn't evaluate it either, but custom settings often give good results when the other options can't. The user creates a custom setting through the white balance menu, by pointing the camera at something white and pressing the OK button.
ISO
The Optio E30 has an automatic option for ISO, and it allows the user to set sensitivity to 80, 160, 320 or 400. Many compact cameras offer higher ISO settings that 400, usually with a significant penalty in image quality. The E30's ISO is set via a menu, so the process is a little slow. Depending on the display setting, the user can see the ISO onscreen while shooting or in playback.
Shutter Speed
The Pentax spec sheet says the E30 has a shutter speed range of approximately 1/2000 to 4 seconds. The range is ample for the needs of the typical user. There is no way to manually set or monitor shutter speed on the E30.
Aperture
The maximum aperture for the E30's zoom ranges from f/2.7 to 4.8. The f/4.8 setting will limit available-light shooting, but the E30's aperture range is comparable to other cameras in its class. We don't have any data about the minimum aperture available on the E30, because it can't be set manually. Typically, such short focal-length lenses don't perform well below f/8.
