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Hello this is a quick review of the Pentax Optio P80 camera
basically, just a few
good and bad points about it
first the good
it's pretty thin
the lens when
inside
doesn't portrude
it slips easily into
anybody's pocket
so you don't necessarily need a camera case for it
the materials especially at the
places you touch
Are pretty nice, so here at the top
a lot of metallic parts, the case is
glossy, the
buttons
have good tacticle response, they're not too difficult to press
one of the imprints
is crooked
that's not
all that important
has a wide angle lens; this
is quite an advantage
especially
after using a Canon A95 camera
this one is 28 millimeters
mine was about 37 millimeters I think
so
get more of your friends in the same pictured frame
definitely an advantage
other than that
it's quick to deploy
I'll show you an example
by pressing the
top button here
pressing the
shutter and it took the picture already
and took the second picture now
so
it's fast
actually it's taking a video right now
because it remembers that's the video mode it had ...
that's mode I was in before
gonna talk about that later
one advantage also is
when you press on the playback button you're reviewing your pictures...
you can press at any time on the
shutter
and allready; it immediatelly goes back into the video mode
well picture taking mode, recording mode - whichever
and that's pretty good because
if you ever pass it to a friend or a stranger
they won't have to navigate through the menus
that's the good points now the bad points
first off the placement ofthe a flash
you know as the flash is
right there
whenever somebody
doesn't know the camera takes a picture
they might obstruct it
so
they'll end up with
images with dark areas
the
automatic white balance
is very bad, especially if you don't turn on
the flash
it tends to put everything in yellow
even in good lighting
indoor lighting
the
camera takes pictures
mostly in 400 ISO
modes 0:03:52.319,0:03:54.349 400 ISO sensitivity
which tends to be very grainy
I mean even
if you turn on the flash it
still does that
which is kind of disappointing
the only way to alleviate that is to
going to
program picture mode
change the ISO
change a lot of things
and then remember that you're in that mode next time the
your surroundings change which kind of defeats the point of a
Point-and-shoot camera
of this size
every time
I don't want to take pictures with the flash I have to remember to
change the white balance and it's quite drastic
the manual white balance and automatic white balance
it's totally off
other disadvantages
the viewing angle of the lens
is
very narrow
I can't get the camera above my head before
before the screen just disappears
I'm used to a
to a display I can rotate with the A95
so the viewing angle was never an issue but I know that other cameras do a better job at this
if you want to take a picture above a
crowd
from the side
things like that
another small gripe is the fact that
when in playback
mode
you're zooming in
the picture
it's kind of laggy
but still usable
I just wish it was faster
with all that said
I'm going to be returning this tomorrow
i'll be exchanged it instead for a
canon
950IS
which is
very similar to this one in
size
same wide-angle lens
although this time it has image stabilization
This one has digital image stablization
which is not effective at all
i'd rather just
not use the
shake reduction feature as it's called
when taking pictures even at higher sensitivities higher ISO's
it will still
be able to...
the picture won't be all that grainy I was very surprised to see
online reviews of the Canon
at its
very good
noise levels
so
you might as well
take pictures with your
cell phone
with the high levels of noise that this camera
puts out in
automatic modes
it's kind of
pointless
ah well - live and learn