Pentax Q compact system camera
The cutest camera in the world?
Review When it come to compact system cameras, Pentax has form, if your memory goes back far enough. Like the Auto110 SLR film camera of old, the Pentax Q is laughably small, but in a good way. It’s a happy laugh – like a friendly chuckle at the burblings of a new-born. Its design is achingly cute – especially the white version I received for review – while build quality is impressively and surprisingly high.
The Pentax Q – a fully-working scale model of an enthusiast camera
Its retro looks are unashamedly borrowed from the classic and prohibitively expensive rangefinders of yore, but this is no cheap plastic scale replica: When handling the Q, its leather-clad magnesium- alloy body feels entirely authentic and reassuringly solid.
It is a little bit small though, did I mention that? Sure, there are normal compacts smaller than the Q, but this is a camera that’s designed to be tweaked and poked about a bit. There are many tiny buttons to be pushed and dials to be dialled – and if you’re the kind of person who’s considering the Q based on its ability to compete on the same turf as an SLR, you will be pushing and dialling a helluva lot.
This is not a toy
Using the Q is unlike handling and other camera: If you have big hands, then prepare to look a little silly as it’s not so much your hands that will be holding the Pentax Q, or even your fingers. No, the Pentax Q is to be held very much by the fingertips – and I do mean specifically the tips. You know how grown men look riding those mini motorbikes with their knees poking out sideways to great comic effect? Well, expect something a bit like that.
The controls themselves are as well placed and evenly spaced as they can be, given that most of the rear of the camera is taken up by a 3in LCD display – that’s bigger than you’d get on the considerably larger Fujifilm X10, for example. Next to it, the usual up, down, left, right and OK cursor controls are supplemented by discrete Menu, Info and Av buttons along with a green ‘panic’ button which will instantly override the mess you’re making with the manual exposure controls and fix them for you.
Fingertip control
Thumb and forefinger of the right hand get a control dial each: The finger gets the classic mode dial incorporating the usual PASM and full-auto options along with a scene mode selector, dedicated ‘Blur Control’ mode and, of course, the option for 1080p video.
Next page: Wedding bokeh?
COMMENTS
Bokeh?
Can I just pedantically point out the misunderstanding of the term 'bokeh' in the article, as misused by ignorant forum commenters everywhere but, ideally, not in proper reviews themselves.
It's a horrible-looking work, but 'bokeh' refers to the visual *quality* of the out of focus areas - ie. the shape of the artefacts, the smoothness or otherwise of the effect. It's not the fact in itself that a low depth of field has been used to produce these de-focussed areas.
You can't say "The aperture opens wide enough to allow some degree of bokeh" because it's like saying it "allows some degree of nice". You mean it allows a shallow depth of field, or background de-focussing or whatever. You can then go on to discuss the quality of the bokeh if you like :)
Err - Am I the only one
who thinks those sample images look pretty terrible? I wouldn't give you £40 for a camera that captures images like that, never mind £400. Interchangeable lenses is a nice gimmick, but if the body has such a tiny and slow sensor as those shots seem to indicate you might as well just by a pocketful of glass beads and a standard cheap compact.
Thank you for not making me act on my own pedantic urges. I strongly agree with you, good sir.
Good to see.
As a long, long term Pentax user (the lenses for my old ME Super now grace my k-5), I'm loving seeing Pentax come out with such a wide variety of new cameras, and fitting them into the niches they made 30+ years ago (my dad had the Auto110 at my recommendation and still mourns it's passing).
OTOH, it means that I might not have the distinctive name on my camera - Nikons and Canons are now so standard I get asked if Pentax are a new company when I'm being a tourist - a bit of a change from my youth when only grown ups and pros had either, and there were far more Pentax, Minolta, Practika, Ricoh, Zenith, Cosina SLRs on show.
Viewfinder
One of the photos in this review shows a remarkable-looking add-on viewfinder that isn't mentioned at all in the text. Optical viewfinders are of great interest to many people who, like me, feel drawn to these new retro cameras: couldn't you give the reviewer a couple more paras to discuss this (assuming they received the viewfinder)? Or drop the nonsense about the "toy" lenses to make room?
