Pentax Optio M20

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Optio M20 Prices

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External Reviews
Cameras.co.uk Pentax Optio M20 Review

The front of the Pentax Optio M20 has an extending lens that emerges from under an automatic lens cover on the right side of the camera body. The 6.3-18.9mm 3x optical zoom lens has a polished silver ring surrounding it. Above the lens, in the upper right corner of the front face, is its poorly placed and horizontally oriented flash. It was far too easy to cover this flash with fingers of the left hand during two-handed shooting. The in-camera microphone is located to the left of the lens, underneath three cutout holes. Above these three holes is a red self-timer lamp to indicate when the self-timer is turned on.

 

The front of the Pentax Optio M20 is slightly thicker on the left side. The thicker body helps with one-handed shooting. Although, it does take a bit of maneuvering to adequately control it during extended shooting. It would have been nice if Pentax put a bit of grip or texture on the front for when hands get a bit slippery, but the current design is functional.   

 

A 2.5-inch LCD screen fills two-thirds of the Pentax Optio M20’s back face. The LCD is raised from the camera body by a quarter of an inch and is framed by a small band of black. The Pentax logo appears beneath the LCD screen along the bottom of the camera body.  To the right of the LCD along the upper edge of the camera body is the zoom control. The zoom control is a single button that can be pressed on the left side to control wide-angle and on the right side to manipulate telephoto zoom. In review mode, the zoom button doubles as the playback display toggle allowing the user to move from multi-up view to playback zoom up to 8x. The playback/shooting mode button is located beneath the wide-angle portion of the zoom control. It is clearly labeled with the universal playback triangle symbol for easy identification. Four raised dots are arranged vertically to the right of the playback button along the camera’s edge and are certainly useful in providing grip to the thumb when quickly shooting one-handed. A four-way control with a centrally positioned OK button can be found beneath the playback control. Pentax has chosen to split the four-way control into four separate buttons arranged in a circular pattern that mimics a compass’ cardinal directions. With generous space between these larger than normal buttons, photographers with physical setbacks or just larger fingers will find that the design of this control interface is especially friendly. In addition to providing navigation through menu interfaces, these controls have an additional control parameter when the camera is in shooting mode.

 

The up arrow will open an onscreen menu for self-timer and burst mode settings, the right arrow will open the focus mode menu, the down arrow opens the mode menu and the left arrow activates the flash setting display. Each control is clearly labeled with either an icon or full text label to inform photographers of the dualistic capabilities. Some users may not recognize the symbols for flash, self-timer and focus at first glance, but with a little time and some practice, they should become second nature. Beneath the four-way control and directly beside the LCD screen is the menu button for both shooting and review modes. To the right of the menu button is the Green mode button that also doubles as the delete button when in review mode.  Green mode is the closest to a fully automatic mode with controls being restricted to two AF settings, two flash settings and one self-timer mode. Once users have become confident with shooting in Green mode and have begun exploring their cameras’ other shooting modes and control options, they can switch the green button from activating the Green mode to activating a number of image settings and manual control options. This is a nice customization option that will grant immediate access to an oft-used control or setting. Green button options can be switched in the setup menu under the green button sub-menu. Only one function can be assigned to this button at a time and choices include the following options: recorded pixels, quality level, white balance, AF focusing area, ISO, EV compensation, sharpness, saturation and contrast.

There are no features or components on the left side of the Pentax Optio M20. Of note are the rounded edges on the camera body. 

A sizable polished silver wrist-strap eyelet protrudes from the right side of the Pentax Optio M20, making it easier to thread and use, which is handy if you have arthritis, bad eyesight, or big hands. Above this centrally positioned eyelet is a rubber cover that opens along its back edge. When open, this cover flips down and reveals the PC/AV port for connection to a television, personal computer or printer. Although these are the only two components on the right side of the camera, there is another small port cover located in the lower front corner that opens to the AA battery compartment. It didn’t take too much work to open. Unfortunately, it seems that this design is ideal for allowing water or moisture to enter the battery compartment.

The top of the Pentax Optio M20 has a raised darker silver bar that extends from the left side of the camera across two-thirds of the camera length. In the middle of this bar is a cluster of ten cutout pinholes that act as a cover for the in-camera monaural speaker. The polished silver on/off button is located to the right of the in-camera speaker and is labeled using a slight embossing. To the right of the power button is a sizable shutter button positioned for comfortable activation with the second finger of the right hand. An ambient light sensor is located on the back edge of the M20’s top face where the upper right corner of the LCD frame connects with the camera body.

The tripod socket is located on the far left edge of the Pentax Optio M20’s bottom face. It is located far enough away from the battery/memory card slot that photographers will be able to make alterations to those two features without having to take the camera off of the tripod. Unfortunately though, the socket is made of plastic. Since a plastic socket is easy to strip without too much effort, this feature will be rendered useless. A metal socket wouldn’t have cost that much more to the manufacturer and the durability would have been vastly superior to the plastic socket on the Pentax M20. To the right of center on the bottom is the ImageLink terminal for direct printing connection to compatible printers. To the right of the ImageLink terminal, there is another cover that opens by pressing on it slightly and shifting it to the right. This cover opens easily and is hinged along the left edge. The hinge appears to be strong enough to deal with some mishandling and abuse. Under this cover are the battery and memory card slots for the Pentax Optio M20. The batteries are AA and photographers shooting on a tripod should be aware that there is no mechanism holding these batteries into the camera body once the cover has been opened, forgetting this will inevitably mean hunting around for batteries at one’s feet.