Full Review

I have been in the market for a digital camera for quite awhile. All the cameras I had found had been expensive, or too cheap which means poor quality. Then, when I was flipping through a photography magazine, I find the Pentax Ei-100 digital camera. One, Pentax is a great camera brand, and two, it has a video out. I had been looking for a digital camera with a video out, because then you can use it as a webcam. I haven't been able to do this yet, though, because I cannot find a video cable to match it's size. The 3 ports on the side are USB, Video, and Power. No, this camera does not come with an AC adaptor. It uses 4 AA batteries. I have found the battery life to be OK if you turn the camera off after every picture, and don't use the LCD too often. The camera turns on and off very quickly, no delays, so this should not be a problem. The LCD is very cool, but I have found the color of the LCD is not very accurate or pretty. Its a bit too sharp, and the colors are off sometimes. So, do not think the pictures you take look like the pictures in the LCD preview. You can adjust brightness on the LCD, which still doesn't help much in bright light. The camera was very intuitive for me, I didn't need to read much of the manual. But for those of you who would like to, it seems decent enough. There are many options on this camera, such as 3 quality levels at 2 different sizes (1280, 640). There is also a DIGITAL zoom , only available in 1280 mode. I have found the camera takes great pictures, very sharp, very detailed, even at medium quality. There are 4 types of flash options, Auto flash, auto flash with red eye reduction, flash on and flash off. The auto flash with red eye reduction has worked very well for me. There are 5 modes to switch between: Setup, PC, Trash, Slide show, and Camera. In setup mode, you can setup the date, time, language, format card, sound, and video mode. You transfer pictures to your computer in PC mode. It works fine in Mac OS 9, but OS X cannot read it yet. In trash mode, you can trash pictures. In slide show mode, you can have all your pictures come up on the LCD in little boxes, or you can look at them one at a time. You can also zoom in on the pictures to see them closer. Last but not least is camera mode in which you actually take the pictures. The camera comes with an internal 8mb of memory, which allows for 138 pictures in low quality 640 mode, or 17 in 1280 at the best quality. You can use compact flash cards for more space. The camera also has a 10 second self timer function. I bought this camera on ebay for $120, plus $12 shipping. I think it's a great camera for very cheap.