Pentax Optio 555 Review

Pros: very compact, good zoom (5x) for a 5MP camera, good value, great image quality, battery life

Cons: only 16MB card included; a little small for big hands

(Note: this review originally posted to epinions.com)

Out Of The Box Basics

Overall, this is an excellent camera for the money. Its combination of very compact size, good 5x zoom, great resolution and image quality, and battery life made this camera my pick. It has a lot more practical features than I thought when I ordered it, and I'll go through the key ones here.

What's in the Box

No case is included, although the lens is covered automatically when you turn the camera off. I have also found a basic leather case/wrap for about $15 online. For me, the camera is small enough that I'll probably just stick it in my pocket without a case at all.

With the high-quality, high-res JPG output (which is why you bought a 5MP camera in the first place, right?), you'll only get 5 pictures on the 16MB SD card they include with the camera. A 16MB card actually good, because practically everybody will go out and buy a 256MB or 512 MB SD card anyway, so the fact that they include a tiny one lowers the initial cost of the camera.

Your SD card must be formatted by the camera (a simple process in the Setup menu), but still works OK in your PC. I have a SD card reader that plugs into a USB port, and I can take the SD card out of the camera and stick it in the SD reader. It shows up as the F: drive on my PC, and I can copy the JPG files directly off it onto my C: drive. With some cameras, this is not possible.

Sample Photo

Here's a picture I took today.  This picture is in the highest resolution (2592x1944) at the highest JPG quality (***).  Click on the thumbnail for the actual picture.  It's 3.3MB. 

Note: Internet Explorer automatically resizes pictures to fit the browser, so the picture may look smaller in your browser than it actually is.  Put your mouse cursor over the image for a second or two, and a little icon should show up in the lower-right corner that looks like this:

Click on that icon, and the picture will be displayed at its actual resolution.  If you want, you can disable this behavior permanently  (Tools - Internet Options - Advanced tab - uncheck 'Enabled Automatic Image Resizing').

Battery

The battery life in this camera is really good: Pentax includes a special-purpose, 1800mAh battery that Pentax claims is good for about 400 mixed (flash/non-flash) pictures. Based on my use, I suspect it's about 300, which is still really good.

The camera includes an external charger, so you have to remove the battery from the camera to charge it. The claimed charge time is a maximum of 3 hours, although practically, it takes a lot less than that -- more like an hour, unless the battery is fully discharged. An optional DC adapter is also available, so you can power the camera without a battery, and presumably charge the battery while it's in the camera. A spare battery is about $60.

Basic Camera Features

If you're a point-and-shoot person, this camera couldn't be any easier. Set the dial to P. Then point, and shoot. You'll get the best results under any conditions, generally speaking. (Camera buffs and feature freaks will also be happy; read on.)  The LCD viewfinder on the back of the camera is average size (1.5"), but bright and usable outdoors. It's a single button to switch from Capture Mode (taking pictures) to Playback Mode (reviewing them in the little viewfinder). One usability complaint: Pentax uses the little joystick (the 4-way button with 'OK' in the middle) in a confusing way sometimes -- push 'left' to do one thing, push 'right' to do another, etc. They overloaded this control with a few too many features, in some cases.

The zoom is nicely implemented. Because you're interested in a camera with a 5x zoom, you'll probably use this a lot, and you'll appreciate it. When zooming in, the zoom stops ("sticks") for a second at the edge of the optical zoom, before it goes into digital zoom. This is very useful, because most people don't even bother with the "digital" portion of the zoom -- it only reduces image quality. It's the optical zoom that matters. It is possible to turn off digital zoom through the Setup menu (which I have done).

Normal hand position doesn't get in the way of anything. However, big-handed guys may feel a bit cramped with this camera, because the body is very compact.

Menus

Advanced Features For Normal People

This camera has a lot of advanced features, and there's several you'll actually use.

Instant Review

This feature is cool, and you should practice using it when you first get your camera, because you'll like it. Within a few seconds of taking a picture, you can add a voice annotation to the picture just by pushing the "OK" button, then speaking ("this is our hotel in the Bahamas"). Your voice is saved as a .WAV file with the same name as the picture. You can also instant-delete a bad picture by pushing the button with the trash can. You can set the time for Instant Review in the Setup menu; the default is 2 seconds, but I bumped it up to 4 seconds. Note that the picture doesn't start writing to thecard until after the review period is up, so don't make it too long.

Panoramics

This is another feature that you will absolutely love when you start using it. "Panos" are a series of left-to-right photos of a scenic area that are "stitched" together seamlessly so they look like one big, long, skinny picture. The camera makes it really easy to take panos: simply turn the dial to pano mode (between PICT and 3D), and press 'right' on the 4-way/OK control. Then, start from the left on some scenic shot, and take a picture. Then, look at the viewfinder. You'll notice that on the left-hand side, there's a semi-transparent slice of that photo on the left-hand side. You can then pan yourself to the right, and line up the next shot with the edge of the last shot. Keep taking pictures to the right until you've captured the whole scene. Then, when you download the pictures to your PC, then included software will "stitch" them together seamlessly, and it'll look like one big long picture. One complaint: in pano mode, the camera does not lock the exposure from shot to shot like some other cameras, so if the lighting varies as you pan, the stitched picture comes out with dark/light spots. This can be overcome with some Photoshop work, but it's a pain.

Panoramic Examples

Here are a couple examples of "stitching" pictures together.  (Sorry about the lousy lighting; I was trying to outrun the rain today to get these shots from Cape Horn in the Columbia River Gorge.)  Click on any of the thumbnails for the real photograph; I took them all in 2592x1944 mode in Best JPG.  The resulting panoramic was stitched together using the included ACDSee software.  Notice the excellent blending.  The dark band in the middle is due to the lack of exposure lock I talked about above.

+ +     =   

Here's another example:

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Movies

In Movie mode, the camera will capture 320x240 video (and audio) at what looks like about 15 frames per second. There is no limit on the length of the video, like there is with some other cameras. The files are saved as .MOV files that may be played back with Apple's QuickTime player, or with the included ACDSee software. The files are reasonably sized, and you can get over 11 minutes of video on a 256MB SD card. Zooming really negatively affects the video quality.

Resolution, Quality, and File Size

The camera takes pictures in 5 resolutions:

• 2592x1944 (4.8MP)
• 2048x1536 (3.0MP)
• 1600x1200 (1.8MP)
• 1024x768 (0.75MP)
• 640x480 (0.3MP)

And 4 quality modes:

• TIFF
• *** (best JPG)
• ** (better JPG)
• * (good JPG)

The TIFFs are gigantic at 14.8MB per picture, and they take about 30 seconds to write to the card after taking the picture. I doubt TIFF is used much. I shoot most of my pictures in 2592x1944 at the best JPG level (***); the quality is excellent, and the files are not too big -- about 3MB per picture, and they take about 4 seconds to write to the card after taking the picture.

Other Standard Features

Macro and Super-Macro: these modes are for taking super-close shots (of flowers, etc.) Super-macro is really nice, and you can get really close and still take in-focus pictures.

Remote control: an optional remote control for taking pictures of yourself without having to outrun the 10-second timer.

Flash: The flash works very well, and its intensity is adjustable. The flash has its own button on the back of the camera, and you can cycle through these five flash settings:

• Auto
• Always on
• Always off
• Always on + redeye reduction
• Auto + redeye reduction

Standard exposure features: manual focus, aperture-priority (Av), shutter-priority (Tv), and manual (M) exposure are available as well. You may also set some preferences and save them in USER mode.

Other Advanced Features

Continuous shooting: this mode allows you to hold down the shutter button and the camera will take pictures continuously. This is kind of nice, but it has a few problems. First, the camera only appears to set the focus for the first shot, and doesn't refocus after that, so if you're tracking a moving object (like a running pet, for example), a lot of the shots will come out blurry. Also, you have to drop the quality and resolution to take more than a few shots before the internal memory fills up. At 2592x1944 ***, you only get 3 or 4 before it stops shooting. At 1024x768 **, I took 50+ and it was still going. Note that there is no flash option in Continuous mode.

Interval shooting: You may set up the camera to take pictures every x seconds. For example, take a picture every 5 seconds, and stop after taking 10 of them. You may also set an optional start time (e.g. 2:30 PM).

3D: the camera has a 3D mode, and it actually sort of works. You take 2 pictures of the same subject, and shift your position ever so slightly between shots (grid lines help you match the position between shots).  You can take the pictures in 'parallel' mode (3D glasses required, included), or in 'cross' mode where you cross your eyes to sync the images. If you've ever looked at one of those 3D posters or books, you'll get the idea. You can print them out, but you can also see the 3D effect on the screen if you size the picture properly. It's a novelty you probably won't use much, but it's fun.

Sound-only (WAV) file recording: in sound-only mode, you can do sound recordings. A 256MB card will hold about 8-9 hours of audio.

Multiple exposure: you may expose the same image more than once. Take a picture, then you can essentially 'back up the film' and take another over top of it. Film camera buffs will recognize this feature.

Filenames continually increment: this camera continually increments the filename (IMGP0001.JPG, IMGP0002.JPG), even between card unloads. This is nice, because you don't get duplicate filenames if you unload your card in the middle of the day (like my old camera did). Also, it makes it easy to tell exactly how many pictures you've taken, up to 10,000, of course.

Included Software

The camera includes three packages, all of which I like and use:

• ACDSee for Pentax (review, slide show, rotate, rename, exposure, categorize, stitch, ...)
• ACD FotoCanvas (like a mini-Photoshop -- sharpen, exposure, contrast, color balance, ...)
• FotoSlate (flexible layouts for printing images)

Screen Shots

Summary

All in all, this camera is a great all-around package that I highly recommend.