Pentax Optio W60 Digital Camera Review

Pentax Optio W60

Digital Camera Review

2 The Pentax Optio W60 is meant to be your foul-weather photographic friend, oblivious to water (whether a splash or a full-on immersion) and freezing cold. You wouldn't know it at a glance, though - the 10-megapixel W60 is as sleekly styled and pocketable as any non-ruggedized compact camera. You do pay a premium price for weatherproofing, though, at $329.95. After running the camera through our complete suite of lab and field testing, we like the W60 for snowboarders and poolside pleasures, but the lack of manual controls and slow shooting performance are concerns. The full review follows.
Advertisement
Recently Viewed Products
$570
$281
$292
$1,049
Top Point & Shoot Cameras
Max Price: $1020
$0 $255 $510 $765 $1020
Filters
All
Canon
Casio
Fuji
Kodak
Nikon
Olympus
Panasonic
Pentax
Sony
All
Compact
High-End
Pocket
Ultra-Zoom
1.Sony Cyber-shot DSC-HX1
Ultra-Zoom
$400
2.Canon SX1 IS
Ultra-Zoom
$527
3.Panasonic DMC-ZS3
Compact
$318
4.Samsung HZ15W
Ultra-Zoom
$280
5.Sony Cyber-shot DSC-T900
Pocket
$325
Optio W60 Prices
Latest Camera Reviews
DSLR Point & Shoot
Panasonic
DMC-GF1
Samsung
TL225
Pentax
K10D
Canon
PowerShot S90
Olympus
E-P1
Canon
G11
Canon
EOS 5D
Panasonic
DMC-ZS3
Nikon
D3000
Canon
PowerShot A650 IS
External Reviews
Trusted Reviews
Pentax Optio W60
Imaging Resource
Pentax Optio W60
DigitalCameraReview.com
Pentax Optio W60
Steve's Digicams
Pentax Optio W60

Picture Quality / Size Options (5.80)

The 1/2.3-inch CCD sensor, with 10.34 total pixels, delivers 10.0 effective megapixels. Available resolutions are:

10 M
3648 x 2736
7.5 M
3648 x 2056 (16:9)
7 M
3072 x 2304
5 M
2592 x 1944
3 M 2048 x 1536
1280 1280 x 960
1024
1024 x 768
640
640 x 480
 
Three compression levels are provided, Best, Better and Good. We were unhappy with the fact that Better, described in the manual as “suitable for viewing the image on a computer screen,” is used as the default setting, and imposed with no flexibility in the ultra-simple Green Mode, rather than the Best setting, which is more print-friendly.

Picture Effects Mode (4.75)
A variety of editing and picture effects functions are available during playback, with the option to overwrite the edited file or save a new version when appropriate. These tools include:

Shake Reduction: attempts to remove blur from low-light images

Resize: change image size and/or compression

Crop: a variety of crop sizes and positions are available

Rotate: available rotation positions are previewed in thumbnails on screen

Digital Filter: effects include B&W, sepia, color shift (red, pink, purple, blue, green, yellow), color extraction (red, green, blue), soft filter, brightness adjustment, fish-eye

Frame Composite: overlay image of frame on a photo (over 80 designs are available)

Red-eye Compensation: automated fix

While taking photos a panoramic image capture option is available, which automatically stitches together up to three horizontally panned images in the camera. A ghost image of the edge of the previous shot appears on-screen to aid in aligning the next shot. There’s also a special-purpose panoramic mode called Digital Wide. You take two shots in portrait (vertical) orientation, and the camera stitches them together to mimic the frame proportions of 35mm camera, though the final image is limited to 5-megapixel resolution. We found the panorama process worked very nicely, creating nice clean connections between handheld images in under a minute.

It is also possible to shoot with a picture frame overlay while taking pictures, but the option to add one later seems much more practical.

Advertisement