Pentax Optio H90 12.1 MP Digital Camera with 5x Wide Angle Optical Zoom and 2.7-Inch LCD (Ceramic White)

#1: Pentax Optio H90 12.1 MP Digital Camera with 5x Wide Angle Optical Zoom and 2.7-Inch LCD (Ceramic White) Reviews!

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The Pentax Optio H90 is my eighth digital camera. I've been shooting digital since 2003 and have owned several Fujifilm and one Samsung. I still own a Fuji 8mp and a Samsung 12mp. This background is so that you know I've purchased and learned to use a number of digicams.

The Optio H90 is a wonderful little camera. It has great product design and is easy to hold and use. It has the softest shutter of any camera I've ever owned and that is a plus. The controls are very well laid out. It's internal menus are the easiest, most logical and well thought out of any I've ever looked at or used. There is surprising depth to what this camera can do. My favorite feature is what Pentax calls "Memory." This function allows you to set and have the camera remember, each time you turn it on, an extensive list of settings. The coolest of these items is the ability to zoom the camera to any focal length and have the H90 recall it. So if between the 28 - 140mm (35 equivalent) focal lengths you'd like to maybe start around a 50mm lens equivalent, you can do it. There is also a "Green Button" that allows you to take your favorite variable function and bring it out of the menu and onto the green button. I use mine to bracket exposures.

The photos are of very good quality, but perhaps just a bit soft in low light. Pentax has a post shot stabilization system, Pixel Track SR, that actually works quite well. There is a slight delay when it functions, but no more so that other cameras "fix" computations. The menu and mode functions offer an enormous variety of settings. The "OK" button sets what information you can see on the LCD screen. You just push it to see more or less information. The Optio H90 comes is three color varieties, I got the silver and ceramic white job, a very clean looking product. The screen is quite good, even in bright sunlight, but you will probably want to brighten it some to shoot is direct sun. The camera doesn't have an automatic brightness mode. It's very reasonably priced, as well.

Of course, it's not perfect. I wish it had a bit more battery life, it's about average for its class I would say. In the review mode the lens does not retract. I wish it would, in order to protect against accidental touching of the lens or possible damage. The camera batteries don't charge in the camera. That would be nice, too. I bought a SD/USB reader and upload photos to my Macs using it, thereby saving a bit of battery life.

My conclusion is that the Pentax Optio is a great camera for beginners through advanced amateur photographers. It is a camera you'll want to keep on your person at all times. The H90 delivers quality images in a huge varietiy of shooting situations. I've taken great macro photos as well as scenics with it. I recommend it to anyone looking for a reasonably priced and very capable digital camera.

Pentax Optio H90 12.1 MP Digital Camera with 5x Wide Angle Optical Zoom and 2.7-Inch LCD (Ceramic White) Features

• 12.1 megapixel CCD
• 720p high-definition video at 30 fps
• Wide-angle, 5x optical zoom lens (28?140mm equivalent)
• 2.7" LCD display
• Art gallery inspired aesthetics with an ultra slim design

Customer Reviews

Cool camera & a good value - triplight - USA
This is a very appealing little camera. For about 0 there are features not found in much more expensive cameras, plus the design is clean with upbeat colors. It's also the lightest camera I've ever owned; it weighs less than my phone.

A few nice things I want to mention:

- Flash photos look great, with beautiful color and exposure. I'm constantly surprised by how well it does. I have a ,200 camera whose built-in flash can't match it without careful attention to settings. For the H90, just put it on auto and shoot away.

- It corrects distortion automatically, so curved walls and doorways shot at wide angle will look straight. Unfortunately the correction is not live, so you see the distortion when framing, then the corrected image on the LCD right after the shot (which can be weird).

- It corrects for purple fringing and chromatic aberration, which if you're not familiar with the terms, means that the blue/red/purple/yellow lines you see around highlights in most digital photos is cleaned up, so the images look more like film in that respect.

- It corrects for highlights and shadows to help prevent blowout in high-contrast scenes.

- Amazingly, it has pixel mapping. If you get a white or colored dot in every photo (a dead pixel) you can run this feature and the camera will "map" it out, essentially repairing it. Very few cameras have this; usually, you have to send it to the manufacturer to have this problem fixed.

- The LCD is actually crisp and very nice.

At this price, there are downsides of course. The main problem is image noise. The sensor is so tiny that at any setting above ISO 200 photos begin looking like sandpaper, losing detail. This is a concern for me, so I keep the ISO as low as possible at all times. In program mode this is limited to 160, but in auto mode you can go down to 80 (which is strange, this should be the opposite). Having to do this causes another problem: since the camera has no true image stabilization, it becomes very tough to get sharp photos in low light, or even in shady areas. I manage to get around this with some careful hand holding and bracing against various objects, something I mastered during years of Canon Elph ownership from 2001-2005. Sometimes this actually leads to more interesting photos, but sometimes you just can't get the shot.

Still, I have a lot of fun with the H90. It's a pleasure to use and I enjoy the challenge of squeezing the best photos I can out of it.