Pentax Optio A10 Digital Camera Review
Lisa Malyon
As far as features go, the A10 isn’t short of them to be fair. It’s got an 80-megapixel resolution, sensor-shifting shake reduction, ISO 800 sensitivity; however, anything over ISO200 has really noticeable noise. It has 15 typical scene modes and 5 different ones including movie, voice recording, frame composite, full automatic and programmed exposure. The frame mode is good and gives 3 optional frames to choose from but more are available from the Pentax website. Shutter speeds range from 1/2,000 second to 4 seconds and the lens's maximum aperture spans f/2.8 at 38mm to f/5.4 at 114mm. The flash is good but only up to about 5 metres. The A10 has got a small internal memory of 24MB so you’ll have to get an SD card. We can certainly promise that this camera doesn’t win any races. It is incredibly slow with a start-up-to-shoot time of 3.8secs and even more when using the flash. We only got one shot every 4.2 seconds which was so disappointing. The A10 is an okay camera for the amateur point-and-shoot photographer as long as they are not expecting too much. The excessive noise makes it impractical for use above ISO200 which is disappointing. Lisa Malyon We were surprised at the performance of Pentax’s Optio A10 considering it appeared so highly specified. First impressions when holding the A10 were that it is light at 156g and it has a slight design measuring 89x53x23mm. 
I found it comfortable to hold and perfectly pocketable. It’s got lots of hard buttons allowing you to bypass the lengthy menus. On the top you’ll find an illuminated power switch, shutter release button and shake-reduction effect preview button. This works well with the small green button on the back which does a few jobs - one being that it converts the four-way cursor into an adjustor for shake reduction. Also on the back panel there is a standard zoom rocker, playback button, menu key and a four-way cursor pad with a central OK button. It’s got a high-resolution 232,000-pixel 2.5in LCD screen which decides to blank out in burst mode, and without a viewfinder this means that you are shooting pictures completely blind. Also, the screen doesn’t like direct sunlight and washes out at the first opportunity.
The outcome did make up for the lethargic performance however. The pictures were generally good for a point and shoot camera but colours lacked saturation and the red-eye prevention pre-flash wasn’t much good really.
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Pros + Extra scene modes are fun to use |
Cons - Excessive noise above ISO200 |
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Overall Rating 
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17/6/2006 at 12:55:59pm
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