One of the few waterproof digital cameras out there right now.

Author's Rating:

Pros: Waterproof to 5ft for 30 minutes, Pentax quality, small size, SD card, good battery

Cons: Battery door a weak spot. Lacks functions of newer cameras. LCD weak in bright sun.

The Bottom Line: 
Look at this for a beach camera, built like a tank, very durable. Underwater capability is handy.

Author's Review
I have several cameras including a professional digital, I certainly didn't really need another one. The attraction of this camera is its supposed waterproof capabilities and the fact that being newer technology it's a bit faster on the uptake than most digitals this size. The Pentax name is an oldie and usually a goodie. I've got Pentax film slrs and lenses from 20 years ago and for the most part they were good cameras and great lenses.

When I started looking at waterproof digitals the two products I narrowed it down to were this one and the Olympus 720 SW. The olympus is kind of new and there are few consumer reviews written about it, this one has been around for awhile and has gotten rave reviews; it's also about a hundred bucks cheaper than the olympus product. The main differences between the two as far as I can tell are "bright" afterprocessing technology on the olympus, iso1600 mode (pentax only has iso800), higher megapixel resolution and antishake technology available for the still shots as well as the movies (where the Pentax only has the antishake for the movie modes). Last but not least, there is a professional underwater case available for the Olympus that allows the camera to be taken to a very respectable depth underwater.

I was really impressed with the Olympus stylus 710 (also weatherproof but not waterproof) that I played with in the store. One thing that turns me off about the Olympus products is that they use xD memory cards instead of secure digital and I didn't want yet another memory card type to deal with that nothing else can use. (Compact flash and secure digital are used by several other devices I own so I always have extra cards to use if needed). In the end I couldn't justify the extra outlay (and having to wait for it because it wasn't in stock) for the Olympus and went with this one.

What's in the box:
Camera
Strap
software disc
AV cable
USB cable
Battery
Charger
Manual
quicksetup guide
serial number sheet

What else do I need to buy?
Camera doesn't come with an SD card, even a small one (for the price they should at least give you a 128 card) if you don't have a card the camera has some built in memory for a few shots. You may also want a strap that cinches to your wrist, the one they include doesn't.

Setup:
Charge the battery for about 1.5 hours.
Install the battery
set the date and time
most of the rest of the defaults will be fine for most people

Camera layout:
On the front is the lens window and the flash window and the autofocus eye. On the left side is a strap holder. On the top is the on off switch and the speaker and the microphone as well as the shutter button. On the back upper right is the zoom control, below zoom is the trash button and the playback button, next is the four way controller and at the very bottom is the menu button. The entire left side of the camera is taken up by the very generously sized lcd.

Menu:
Most of the modes are pretty intuitive and once you realize there are two tabs in the menu (one for camera settings like date/time & card formatting and one for other stuff like saturation etc.) then it's really not that hard to figure out how to find what you need. Most settings are changed by pressing the right button on the four way selector. This button arrangement has become pretty standard on a lot of digitals, four buttons for right, left, up, down and a OK button in the middle to confirm. Unlike several digitals this size that I've seen you can set image quality and megapixel size and you have several choices, not just one or two. For most of us 4 megapixels is plenty of resolution unless you're blowing up a small section of the image...then you appreciate the extra resolution.

Some camera settings can't be changed unless the menu is set to Program mode (i.e. you can't change saturation etc. unless in program mode.)

Operation:
This camera doesn't have any knobs to turn at all, it's all accessed from menus on the lcd screen. This camera has no optical viewfinder at all, you use the screen for everything. You may want to invest in one of those flip up shade gadgets, I've seen them on ebay for this camera, it seems visible enough in daylight but maybe not so much in full sun.

Mode:
All the different modes are accessed by pressing the down arrow or Mode button on the back of the camera. When you select the icon the name pops up and generally tells you what the selection does.

Playback mode:
The playback mode is accessed from the button with the arrow on it on the back of the camera (beneath the trash can button). This camera offers "post processing" options to you on the camera. You can correct redeye, brighten up a dark image, crop or trim stills, add frames, edit movies, recover accidentally deleted images, change color or make it black and white, add voice annotation to an image, lock the sd card so you can't write over it, add frames etc. From reading the book, the redeye correction may only work if the subject is fairly close up...if it can't detect the redeye you get an error message. Of course you can do all this stuff in software like photoshop elements but if you want to print from the camera you'll appreciate these functions.

Printing from the camera:
If you have a DPOF cable printer (I believe the brand name is PictBridge or Directprint) you can hook your camera to your printer and print without a computer. I have no need for this but there are starting to be available very compact printers so you can hand out 4X6's on the spot. My canon Pixma supports this function and I believe other brands have licensed the Canon technology. I suppose if you were running a business taking kid pictures at the zoo or something this might also be attractive to you.

Memory card:
Like I said earlier the xD cards used by the Olympus products were a turn off for me. XD is more expensive for the same sized card and just plain has not been out as long as SD and thus, there may still be some bugs to work out of the tech. I prefer SD or Compact flash both because they've been out longer (and are thus more reliable) and because I can use my cards in other devices I own.

The waterproof function?:
I've seen varying reports of the waterproofness of the camera, the reports I read of people that abused it with no problem were pretty convincing testimony. The battery door also covers the ac input and the the card slot and the av output. Just like with any underwater case or camera, the seals are the weak point. The official rating is 5 feet for 30 minutes, I'm sure they went rather conservative on that. The olympus products claim 10 feet for an hour. The battery door on the Pentax has a rather good sized rubber gasket that apparently locks down into the connector holes when you press the lock button.

On underwater cameras I've owned in the past (still have my Nikonis III in the closet) it was recommended to keep seal grease on the seals, they say nothing about that in the book but I'd certainly be very aware of the flexibility of this seal--most rubber will harden over time unless recent technology has fixed this.....don't know. I suppose the "planned obsolescence" factor comes in here, in two years there will be something much better than this camera available and you won't care if the seal dries out and you can't use it underwater any more because you'll already have bought a new one. Myself, I went to ebay and bought a dry pak (search on dry pak that is the product name, they also make cell phone cases etc.) for fifteen dollars. I look at it as an extra layer of protection, I want to take this camera tubing for four hours and I may not be able to keep it dry when I'm not using it in the water. The sealed functions of this camera are mostly designed for folks that want to use the camera at the beach with no worries and only occasionally for the kids that want to dive to the bottom of the deep end in the pool and take pictures of their siblings underwater.

What I think of it?
For what I bought this for I think it's going to be great. The flash pictures are well exposed, i.e. not too hot or too dark even from a respectable distance.(This is generally one of my peeves about cameras this size. On my other camera this size the flash is underpowered and always dark if the subject is not close in.) The nice big lcd is great. I took the camera out last night and played with the night shot setting, the results were fairly good considering.

You need a fair amount of light for movie mode, if the room is dim you won't be capturing anything great. I'm looking forward to see what movie mode will do in the gym where we usually have our karate tests, i'm kind of getting the impression that even in Auto ISO mode, the movie mode isn't taking advantage of the ISO 800 setting. I put out the extra $$$ for a high speed SD card hoping it would improve performance a bit; I haven't had a chance to test the difference between a run of the mill standard SD card but the camera is fairly snappy with the fast card. On my old snap and shoot of this size I wait a good ten seconds before being able to take another picture, this one is more like two seconds between shots if it's even that.

I understand why they've gone to non-standard batteries however that means extra outlay for a spare battery (they are cheaper on ebay). The way the camera is designed there is no way to download pictures or charge the battery without opening the battery door (and stressing the seal). I think they could have made the camera a bit larger and come up with some sort of scheme (like a cradle) that would allow battery charging and image download without opening the camera up every time. I'm sure if this was designed to be a true underwater camera they would have done a few things differently and that would be one of them.

I haven't tried loading drivers and downloading from the camera, I have windows 64 bit and I can't get drivers for a lot of things (haven't checked on this yet) but I've also just found it's easier and less troublesome to pop the card out and into a reader than messing with downloading from the camera which is usually a slow process.

This is a neat little camera, compact and small, the lens is completely sealed inside i.e. no lens extension for the zoom, but that also means that filters etc probably aren't available. I like this camera better than the vivitar I bought last year and I look forward to using it at karate camp next month. We do a pool work out that is a blast and this will let me take better pictures from in the pool than I can get with my slr from the side of the pool. I'm also looking forward to taking lots of pictures on the tubing trip. I would suggest the biggest sd card you can afford to buy to minimize the need to open and close that battery door any more than necessary.

A note on ISO: Yes this camera can shoot relatively low light ISO 800, however you may find it a bit too grainy if you want to blow it up over 8X10. There are products such as "noise ninja" that will remove noise from digital camera shots. I don't know if they have a profile for this camera yet, but the product is excellent even in auto mode where it is not specifically setup for the individual camera. On most digitals this size iso 400 is really grainy, the only digital I've ever seen that doesn't have unacceptably grainy images at high ISO is my Canon 20D and cameras of that line which cost a great deal more money.

update: Took it outside today shot in a number of conditions. I have to comment on just how well this camera handles heavily backlit situations with fill flash. I was in a restaurant today (the front is all floor to ceiling windows) normally in a situation like that the foreground will be too dark or too hot with the fill flash, this camera handled this normally really tough situation very competently the foreground is not overexposed and neither is the background. Something they don't really say in the manaul is that the camera will choose focus points based on the subject--the focus point is displayed on the lcd, so if it switches to the corner you will know it! As with most digitals of this size focus lock is indicated with green crosshairs and a audible beep. This thing focuses really fast, I will write more as I try it out in different lighting situations and types of shooting, looking forward to trying the underwater functions.

update 06-30-06: Took this camera to the karate test last night. We hold our tests in a city gym, basketball sized floor. The lighting in gyms is sodium or mercury vapor which is not the same color as daylight. Movies taken from far away are great however movies taken closer in....all the faces are kinda dark for some reason (probably to do with the lighting I'm guessing). If there are brigthness adjustments I haven't found them but I haven't really searched either and there's also the after processing functions---don't know if the brighten function works on movies yet. Even if there isn't any way to fix dark movies on the camera, the movie maker that comes with xp professional can lighten it up acceptably. The only problem with movie maker is it doesn't handle quick time natively you have to convert to avi before movie maker can lighten it up...on windows 64 this took 20 seconds for a short clip I shot. If you don't already own a converter utility there are several shareware or donateware utilities that will perform the conversion. The comment someone made about the microphone picking up the operator is true, don't sneeze or giggle, it'll be on the recording. I'm a little disappointed in the microphone but considering that if these movies get used anyplace they'll be silent I really can't complain. Some day I'll invest in one of those new movie cameras that use the notebook hard drive but that's a purchase far down the road, for now this little camera does great even with fast action (30 fps mode).

update on movies: I have found that the movie mode automatically defaults to auto iso setting, I haven't had a chance to see if the after processing utilities can lighten up dark movies but I did find that the extra exposure settings (plus/minus EV) work in movie mode so I just selected plus point three exposure and now those dark faces aren't dark any more. I continue to be impressed with this camera. If you drop the megapixel count down to three megapixels at 30 fps with high resolution (640X480) you can get at least fourty five minutes of video on a 2 gig SD card which is plenty for what I need. I am going to karate camp next week, from what I've heard the blackbelts and the school owner want to shot lots of video to create some teaching aids, I think this little guy is going to come in handy for that. I just now exhausted one battery after a lot of shooting, battery life is pretty respectable for something smaller than a cell phone battery. I just bought two extra batteries on ebay for ten bucks and they work fine...don't pay the exhorbitant list price for these batteries.

update: Really had a chance to give this camera a workout last week. The comment someone made about the lcd in full sun is unfortunately true.....it's difficult or impossible to frame your shot in full sun, you just can't see the lcd very well at all. Fortunately I've got enough photography experience that I can fairly well eyeball what I'm going to be getting in the shot (no zoom of course) and I got some good pictures despite not being able to see what I was going to get. I have to think about what I might be able to do about that, one of those new lcd shades is an idea but it won't work if I have to put the camera in a dry pack for long term wet work. Even inside the dry pak, the camera had no problems focusing properly so either Pentax accounted for the issue or dry pak did. I'm fairly sure that no one is using ultrasonics for focusing anymore, I think it's all infrared now which is probably why this camera had no issues even inside another case. Flash is very respectable on this camera, but outside about 25 feet it's just not able to cover the area (what do you expect it's a very small flash head). I'm very happy with the outdoor pictures I took with this camera and I had it in the pool for a few underwater shots, even took it tubing for four hours and got a few cool shots there too. I highly recommend the dry pak products, I had my cell phone along on the tubing trip and it survived unscathed despite some fairly vigorous swimming and jumping on and off tubes. Still really like the camera, if you shoot indoors at high iso Noise Ninja (noise removal software for digital cameras) has a camera setup for the pentax optio (not this one specifically but it seems to do well enough for the shots off here or you can mess around with creating your own setup). Only real issue I encountered using the dry pak on the tubing trip is that you need to watch for water droplets in front of the lense or it'll ruin your pictures, I think another review mentioned this. Just get in the habbit of checking for water droplets around the lens area and you'll be fine.

update 10-2007, here we are a couple of months out of warranty and the backlight no longer works in camera mode. Which of course makes it nearly impossible to frame your shot. You can see an image on the lcd but without the backlight.........you're guessing. Disappointing I like this camera but it's probably not worth fixing. Going to spend the thirty at the local repair dock to find out but I'll probably just give it to a friend and let him pay to fix it if he wants to. Vivitar has a nice new waterproof out that gets good reviews and can be had for about 160.00 that will most likely replace this.