Digital Camera Review

Digital Camera Review

Jul 29, 2005 - By Patrick Singleton
In the compact Optio S55, Pentax has included a 1/2.5-inch 5.36 total megapixel CCD and 3x optical zoom lens, equivalent to 35.6 - 107mm in 35mm format. Available online for as low as $212 (USD), the Optio S55 offers point-and-shoot consumers an economic, fairly nondescript alternative with some advanced features and some strong limitations. The camera is packaged in a stylized silver body and designed for ease of use. Marketed as a digital camera with "no experience required," Pentax has applied a large 2.5-inch LCD with a magnified-text setting for increasing visibility of on-screen menus and a "Help" function in the "Auto-select" mode to help guide less knowledgeable users through the photographic process. Cased in a 3.5 x 2.5 x 1.1-inch aluminum alloy frame, the Optio S55 extends a bit thicker than some of its direct competitors. This will provide more stability than many of the S55's counterparts, but sacrifices a bit of pocket-portability. The Optio S55 joins a dense pack of sub-$300 point-and-shoot offerings and looks to a combination of ease of use, solid build, and extra features to set it apart from the rest.
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Picture Quality / Size Options (7.5)
The Optio S55 offers three quality levels and six image sizes. The image sizes are: 2560 x 1920, 2304 x 1728, 2048 x 1536, 1600 x 1200, 1024 x 768, and 640 x 480, all of which can be set to “Good,” “Better,” and “Best” quality settings. Quality levels indicate the amount of compression the camera imposes when creating JPEG files. Best images are much less compressed than Good images, so they are about three times larger. Compression works by reducing the amount of data in a picture, so as compression increases, quality goes down. “Best” quality is significantly better than “Better” or “Good.”

Picture Effects Options (7.5)
The Optio S55 offers some unusual picture effects. In-camera digital effects can appear superficial, and editing effects are generally higher quality when applied post-capture in a software application. However, in-camera effects are good for some occasional fun and the S55 has included a far wider range of options than most cameras in its class.

The “Two-in-One” mode allows the user to take two images side by side to form a single “split-screen” picture. The “Panorama Assist” mode takes a row of pictures to be later combined into a panorama. Though the camera cannot combine images, this mode provides data to help ACDSee software combine them on a computer.

The most mainstream, and perhaps the most useful, is a setting to make black-and-white images. There is also a setting to make “Sepia” images, which are black-and-white images turned brown.

The other settings fiddle with color. “Black-and-white + Red” renders everything in the scene black-and-white, except for red things, which appear red. “Black-and-white + Blue” and “Black-and-white + Green” also drain out all colors except one. A typical use for this setting would be a wedding portrait, in which the bride holds a bouquet of red roses. Three other settings, called “Red,” “Green” and “Blue” add a tint of their color to everything in the picture, except very brightly-colored objects. So, on the “Red” setting, you might be able to take a picture of a bright green bottle and a blue flower against a rosy red background.

Control Options Page 8 of 12 Connectivity / Extras
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