Pentax Optio S7 First Impressions Review

Viewfinder
No viewfinder is present on the Optio S7; everything is done through the LCD screen.

LCD Screen
The LCD screen is a large, clear 2.5-inch model with 232k pixels. Images look impressively clear and bright on it when playing back photos, but we found the live preview to be a little jerky, only updating three or four times a second.

Flash
The small flash is located to the left of the lens (looking from the front). Pentax quotes a range of 0.49 to 17 feet at the wide zoom setting and 1.31 to 8.9 feet for the telephoto. We weren’t able to test this at the Photokina show, but that’s a pretty standard range and is quite acceptable for general use.

Zoom Lens
 The zoom lens is an SMC Pentax model with 6 elements in 5 groups, and a focal length of 62mm to 18.6mm. That’s equivalent to a range of 37.5mm to 112.5mm on a 35mm camera; a relatively broad range (especially for a camera this small), but it is not particularly wide; you’d be hard-pressed to take a decent family group shot with a 37.5mm lens. A 4X digital zoom is also present, but this is best not used as it seriously affects the image quality.