Compromising position
Also fully manual are the remaining two lenses in the line-up which have been somewhat surprisingly labelled by Pentax as ‘Toy’ lenses. A charitable interpretation would be toy as in ‘poodle’ rather than toy as in ‘broken by Boxing Day’.
A clip on viewfinder is an option
The ‘Toy’ telephoto 18mm f/8 which extends only slightly the maximum magnification of the standard zoom and an even less useful 6.3mm f/7.1 which actually falls within standard zoom’s range. It should also be noted that all three of these manual lenses have fixed apertures.
Once you work out how to use the Q’s assisted manual focus mode, the fish eye lens in particular is a lot of fun enabling images you won’t be able to get on a fixed-lens camera.
It takes full size SD cards and even has a mini HDMI port
For all its versatility a sophisticated control, there’s no getting away from the fact that the Q is a compact camera with a compact camera’s sensor. If you’re expecting SLR-level sharpness and detail, you’re going to be sorely disappointed. Having only a very dull winter day available for outdoor testing certainly didn’t help the camera achieve its full potential.
The 3in screen dominates the back
In the camera’s natural colour mode, images are rather low in contrast and colours somewhat less punchy than what you might expect from a consumer camera. This gives the advanced user maximum flexibility when post-processing in image editing software and impressive results are available with just a little tweaking.
Next page: Sample Shots
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?
