Pentax Optio V20 Digital Camera Review - Pentax Point and Shoot and Non-DSLR

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Auto Mode (8.00)
The Optio V20 starts up in Auto Picture mode unless you tell the camera otherwise. Auto Picture uses a scene recognition system to categorize your image into one of six shooting modes – standard, night scene, landscape, portrait, sport and flower – and apply appropriate settings. User control is limited to setting image size, image quality level and ISO setting (Auto by default). A second automated exposure mode, called Program Mode, expands the user-controllable options to include white balance, focus and metering modes, exposure compensation and sharpness, saturation and contrast controls.

Moving in the other direction there's Green Mode, designed to keep the user from mucking around with the menu controls at all. Only a subset of the adjustments available through the four-way controller are available from Green Mode: self-timer, macro or pan focus, and flash auto or off.

Users can access the Smile Capture and Face Detection features on the V20 by pressing the dedicated button marked with a smiling face at the top of the camera back. Pressing it toggles between Smile Capture, Face Priority, and Face Priority Off. The Face Priority feature automatically detects up to 15 faces, then optimizes the exposure and focus to suit these subjects. Smile Capture lets you press the shutter, then have the camera wait until it detects a smile before automatically snapping the photo.

Movie Mode (7.25)
The Optio V20 movie mode is more flexible than many compact cameras, providing not only the expected choices for resolution (640 x 480 or 320 x 240) and frame rate (30 or 15 frames per second) but also color options (full color, black and white or sepia), white balance, focus mode and exposure compensation. As with most cameras, optical zoom is locked out white shooting movies (the lens noise would be audible in the recording), though digital zoom is available if your subjects are ready for their close-ups and you're willing to sacrifice image quality to accommodate them.

Drive / Burst Mode (4.00)
Fast shooting is not one of the V20's strengths. We found that, at full resolution, the camera took nearly a second and a half between shots and, more distressing, paused after each pair of shots to write files to the SD card. Clearly, this is not the camera to shoot your favorite football player hustling toward the goal line or diver arcing toward the water.

The self-timer can be set to fire after a delay of 2 or 10 seconds. An on-screen countdown is displayed when using the self-timer, a nice touch, and using the Memory section of the Record menu you can have your self-timer setting applied to each shot rather than manually resetting it each time, a valuable option.

Playback Mode (8.75)
Playback mode is accessed via a dedicated button marked with the instantly recognizable VCR-style Play arrow. There are three on-screen display choices while reviewing your stored photos. The first shows image name, date and time taken and battery level (all but the image name disappear after a few seconds). Pressing the OK button brings up a more detailed display adding, information about image size, compression setting, white balance mode, ISO, shutter speed and aperture plus a luminance histogram (all text stays on-screen until dismissed by the user in this display). In this enhanced display, blown-out areas are highlighted with a red overlay and underexposed areas are highlighted in blinking yellow. An image with both problems looks positively psychedelic. Finally, one more press of the OK button removes all the overlays to present a clean full-screen version of the photo.

Zooming in during playback magnifies the image up to eight times. The Instant Zoom option (available in the Settings menu) lets you jump instantly to maximum magnification with a single push of the zoom control, a handy way to check focus accuracy. To instantly return to normal view from any magnification level, press the OK button, a very handy shortcut.

Zooming out during playback brings up a nine-image thumbnail view, then a calendar view organizing photos by the dates they were taken.

Image editing options are available by pressing the MODE button during playback. Options include image resizing, cropping, rotation, color adjustment, movie editing (dividing clips or capturing stills), adding voice memos and superimposing cheesy photo frames over shot – a generous selection. There's also a simple slideshow utility, with control over interval, between-image effects and sound effect.

Custom Image Presets (6.50)
The Optio V20 provides twelve custom image presets, or scene modes, including settings to match specific subjects and shooting conditions plus two image-combining tools: digital panorama and digital wide.

Night Scene	Used for night scenes. Use a tripod, etc. to reduce shaking and use a flash for portraits.
Landscape	For capturing landscape views. The camera focuses on a wide range.
Flower	For capturing brightly colored flowers. Reproduces the outline of the flower softly.
Natural Skin Tone	Adjusts color and brightness to reproduce skin more beautifully than Portrait.
Portrait	For capturing portraits. The skin tone will be brighter to make the person look healthy.
Surf & Snow	For capturing images with dazzling backgrounds, such as beaches or snowy mountains.
Sport	For subjects in fast motion. Keeps the camera in focus until the shutter is released.
Pet	For capturing images of pets in motion. A setting suitable for the pet’s coat can be set.
Kids	For capturing moving kids. Reproduces healthy and bright skin tone.
Food	For capturing images of food. Saturation will be rather high to make it look appetizing.
Digital Panorama	Stitches images taken with the camera to create a panoramic photograph.
Digital Wide	Composites two images resulting in wider field of view.

Design / Layout	Page 8 of 15		Control Options
Pentax Optio V20 Digital Camera Review Navigation
Intro	Physical Tour	Color and Resolution	Noise and Video
Speed and Timing	Components	Design / Layout	Modes
Control Options	Image Parameters	Connectivity / Extras	Overall Impressions
Conclusion	Sample Photos	Specs / Ratings