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Auto Mode (8.25)
There are three separate automated modes available. Auto Picture, the default setting, lets the camera assess the scene and choose from seven of the available preset modes: Night Scene, Landscape, Portrait, Night Scene Portrait, Sport, Flower and Standard. This is a more sophisticated approach to point-and-shoot than the typical full auto mode found on most compact cameras. That more traditional full auto is available on the W60 as well, by pressing a dedicated button to enter Green Mode, which pegs exposure, white balance, ISO and so on to automatic readings. One oddity about Green Mode is that it automatically sets compression to the middle, “Better” quality setting instead of Best. Considering current SD card capacities, skimping on image quality to save a few megabytes is just wrong, even in full auto mode.
In addition to these two leave-everything-to-the-camera approaches, the W60 supports Program Mode, which sets aperture and shutter speed automatically but leaves other options, such as image size and flash mode, to the user.
Movie Mode (7.25)
The S60 offers separate modes for normal Movies and Underwater Movies. The standard movie mode provides three resolution settings at15 frames per second, a widescreen 1280 x 720 plus 640 x 480 and 320 x 240. The advantage to shooting choppy video with more pixels, in 1280 x 720 mode, eludes us Smoother 30 frame per second video is available when shooting at 640 x 480 and 320 x 240.
Movies can also be shot in black and white or sepia tone. A Movie Shake Reduction mode provides some protection against shaky hands by digitally enlarging the middle of the image sensor, cutting down on the area being shot. It provides a modest improvement under certain circumstances – when shooting out the window of a moving car, for example – but is no substitute for true sensor- or lens-based image stabilization, which the W60 lacks.
The other movie mode that’s actually kind of fun is interval shooting, where you set the camera to shoot a frame at a user-defined interval (1, 5, 10, 30 or 60 minutes) and compile the results into a movie file. Settings to predetermine the length of the movie and any desired delay before the movie shooting begins are also available.
Drive / Burst Mode (6.00)
Two drives modes are available. High-speed continuous shooting promises 3.5 frames per second for two seconds, with resolution capped at 5 megapixels, and met that promise right on the button. Pentax doesn’t offer a speed rating for the standard-resolution continuous shooting mode, which saves out to your memory card after every shot and will keep shooting until the card is full. In our testing, we got roughly one frame a second at full 10-megapixel resolution (without flash, of course).
Playback Mode (9.25)
The image playback screen offers three different displays, toggled by pressing the OK button:
Standard: image name, date and time taken, battery level, 4-way controller key (all but the image name disappear after a few seconds)
Enhanced: image name, date and time taken, battery level, 4-way controller key, image size, compression setting, white balance mode, ISO, shutter speed, aperture and histogram (all stay on-screen until dismissed by user)
Clean : 4-way controller key disappears after a few seconds to leave only photo
As for editing tools for working with images during playback, those are available by pushing the MODE button on the four-way controller while viewing an image. These include digital sharpening to eliminate the appearance of camera shake, resizing, cropping, image rotation, digital filter, movie edit, frame composite, red-eye compensation and voice memo attachment.
Zooming in while in playback mode increases magnification in 28 steps up to 10x. Enabling Quick Zoom in the Setting menu brings magnification up to 10x with a single click of the zoom-in control, a handy way to quickly check the focus of a photo you’ve just taken. You can’t one-click back to normal view, though, requiring the usual modest, tedious steps instead.
Custom Image Presets (8.50)
The custom image presets, which consist of prepared camera setting combinations designed to suit a particular shooting situation, are lumped into the record mode menu along with basic Auto Picture and Program mode choices.
| Night Scene |
night scene images |
| Movie | movies with sound |
| Underwater | shoot images underwater |
| Underwater Movie |
shoot movies underwater |
| Landscape | landscape stills, deep focus |
| Flower | floral photos, soft outline |
| Portrait | enhanced skin tone |
| Digital Wide | join two images for wide frame |
| Surf & Snow | compensate for bright backgrounds |
| Digital SR (Blur Reduction) | boost ISO |
| Kids | captures moving children, adjusts skin tone |
| Pet | track moving pet |
| Half-length Portrait | zoom to portrait cropping, res. to 3 M |
| Sport | focus tracking, high shutter speed |
| Fireworks | bright image in night sky |
| Voice Recording | audio-only recording |
| Night Scene Portrait | foreground subject plus night background |
| Text | shoot documents in color or B&W |
| Food | boosts saturation for more delectable food photos |
| Digital Panorama | stitch 2 or 3 images in camera |
| Frame Composite | shoot 3 M images with ornamental frame |
| Report | capture 1280 x 960 image |
| Page 8 of 15 | Control Options | ||