Pentax Optio P70 (white)

Those looking to step up from taking photos with their cell phone or other mobile device will want to consider the Pentax Optio P70. Fronted by a 27.5mm-equivalent wide-angle lens with a 4x zoom, the 12-megapixel ultracompact camera is point-and-shoot simple with all the automatic comforts we expect as well as some extras found above its price point. It looks great, too, and is thin and light enough that you may forget it's in your pocket. Yep, the P70 has a lot to offer for such a small camera--just not speedy performance.

Much like the Sony Cyber-shot DSC-T77, the P70 is a sliver of a camera, roughly the size of a closed flip phone. The aluminum body is attractive, if a little bit slippery, and available in three colors: silver, white, and red. The biggest gripe with the design is there's no dedicated area for your thumb. There is some room to the right of the Face Detection activation and Playback buttons but, because of the rounded edge to the body, you won't get a firm grip for one-handed shooting. Aside from this detail, the P70 is an exemplary ultracompact design. And Pentax even managed to get a wide-angle lens with a 4x zoom in the petite body, too.

The biggest problem with the P70's design is there's no specific place for your thumb.

For the generation of snapshot photographers who've adjusted to shooting photos with their cell phones, Pentax added a Vertical Snap mode. Hold down the OK button while the camera's off and when the camera eventually turns on, the OK becomes a shutter release, and the directional pad controls the zoom and exposure compensation. The only other control you get is the ability to turn the flash on and off. (Basically, it's the P70's auto-everything Green mode.) It's a fun add-in, but holding the camera like that can be a little tricky, particularly if you need to use the flash.

The Optio P70 isn't short on the point-and-shoot features we've come to expect. You get your Smile Capture, your Blink Detection, and some manner of shake reduction (in this case, it's the company's new Pixel Track SR shake reduction explained in the next paragraph). There's also face detection, and while that's not new, the P70 is capable of hunting down up to 32 faces in as little as 0.03 second. (Sadly, I could not get a group larger than five people during testing as I was not invited to any weddings, parties, or proms. However, it is very fast to detect faces as well as face-shaped objects.) Also, if you've never been good about switching to an appropriate scene mode, the P70 will pick out one of eight automatically.

Like the less expensive Optio E70, the P70 has no optical stabilization, but instead features Pentax's Pixel Track SR for helping minimize the effects of motion blur. Turn it on and it will track motion blur at the pixel level, determining in real time the amount of blur. Once you've taken a shot, it filters the effect motion has on each pixel to sharpen them and remove blur (all of this takes a few seconds after the photo is captured). In my tests it worked better than the traditional method of electronic stabilization of boosting ISO and shutter speed, as Pixel Track doesn't introduce more noise. However, in some of my shots it sacrificed sharpness in order to remove a slight blur. So it's not perfect, but it would be worth turning on if camera shake is unavoidable.

What really brings down the overall rating of the P70 is its slow performance. It starts up moderately fast at 2.5 seconds. However, shutter lag is at the high-end of what we consider acceptable for point-and-shoot cameras: 0.5 second in bright conditions and 1 second in dim. After the shutter's released it takes an average of 3.9 seconds till it's ready for another shot. That's long enough for the flash to recharge when you're using it, so at least that doesn't add to the time. Of course, turning on the Pixel Track SR adds several seconds on top of these times. The P70 has a high-speed continuous mode that drops the resolution to 5 megapixels. Its full-resolution continuous mode is capable of 0.9 frames per second.

Photo quality is good for an ultracompact camera, but low-light shooters will likely be disappointed. The camera offers ISO sensitivity settings from 100 to 6,400; however, ISO 3,200 and 6,400 are fixed at a 5-megapixel resolution. The P70 is best at or below ISO 200 and that best is actually quite good, too. It's not great with extreme highlights and lowlights, but the P70 produces photos with bright and natural colors, good detail, and that are relatively sharp, despite the early onset of noise. Photos taken at ISO 400 would still be suitable for smaller prints and certainly for online use, but the noise reduction starts making subjects look painterly and edges get fuzzy. Detail and sharpness are poor at ISO 800--like most all cameras in the P70's class--and we don't suggest using higher settings.

Pentax gave the P70 the ability to capture video at up to an HD resolution of 720p, but only at 15 frames per second. So while the quality of the video is nice for an ultracompact camera, it's not exactly smooth looking. You're better off keeping it in 640x480 at 30fps, especially if the movie is destined for online sharing. Also, the 4x optical zoom doesn't work in Movie mode.

If there's a follow-up model to the P70 (and I hope there is), it's going to need better processing speed. The design is excellent, the features very good, and the photos are perfectly suitable for who I see as the target user: someone wanting better photos than they can get from their cell phone without sacrificing the portability and convenience. It just needs to be faster.

Shooting speed (in seconds)
(Shorter bars indicate better performance)

Time to first shot

Typical shot-to-shot time (flash)

Typical shot-to-shot time

Shutter lag (dim)

Shutter lag (typical)

Casio Exilim EX-Z250

2.8 

3.7 

3 

0.5 

0.3 

Sony Cyber-shot DSC-T77

2.1 

2.8 

2.2 

0.6 

0.3 

Canon PowerShot SD880 IS

1.2 

3.2 

1.9 

0.8 

0.4 

Pentax Optio P70

2.5 

4 

3.9 

1 

0.5 

Nikon Coolpix S230

3.5 

3.3 

3 

1 

0.5 

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