Physical Tour

Front**

The front of the Optio E10 is dominated by the telescoping lens that protrudes just over an inch from the front of the body when in use. Northwest of the lens is the small, rectangular flash and an autofocus assist light. There are three mic holes beneath the flash. Further to the left is the Pentax logo. At the left edge of the front is a lump that provides extra grip for the hand, the wrist strap eyelet blending into a raised bit that cuts into the camera’s face and reads, "Optio E10." The lens assembly and "Optio E10" logo are set into a shallow basin that curves into most of the camera’s face, for both visual interest and to improve grip.

**Back
**The back of the camera is dominated by the 2.4-inch LCD screen. Above the LCD is a light that indicates power and when the SD card is being accessed. On the right-hand side of the screen, we have (from top to bottom): the zoom control, playback, menu access button and delete button. Below that is the 4-way directional control pad encompassing the OK button used to select options within the menu. North on the directional control pad controls the shooting mode (single, continuous, and delay). East controls the focus mode whose submenus include: macro, multi-point AF and landscape infinity lock. The South button on the directional compass controls exposure compensation, and the flash mode, which includes auto, on, off, and red-eye reduction, is controlled by West side button.

**Left Side
**The left side of this Pentax camera is sparsely populated: the power input and combined A/V and USB port are the only two highlights. Neither is under a port cover of any kind, which is not entirely surprising on a point-and-shoot at this price point. This does, however, bring up the question of dirt and dust sneaking its way into the body.

**Right Side
**On the plain right side, there is only one feature: the wrist strap eyelet.

Top

The top of the Pentax Optio E10 is the home of the mode dial and the on/off button, located in the center of that dial. The surrounding mode dial provides some protection against the camera being powered on accidentally. The shutter button is also here, to the mode dial’s right.

Bottom

The tripod socket on the Optio E10 is located on the bottom of the camera body, right below the lens. This is also the home of the battery and SD card slots, both of which are located under a single panel. This panel is rather awkward: it requires a lot of pressure to close, and does not always close properly. If you don’t push down on the panel hard enough, it leaves a gap that could allow dirt or water into the camera. This is a shortfall that may be attributed to the manufacturer striving to make a particular price point.

Components

Viewfinder

There is no viewfinder on the E10; everything is done through the LCD screen. Again, a skimp like this one is not at all surprising on an economic model such as the Optio E10, where production costs have to be kept down.

LCD Screen
The 2.4-inch LCD screen is bright and has good color, but with only 110,000 pixels, the image is a little hard to see. It’s good enough for checking the photos in general, but it’s sometimes hard to check focus. We weren’t able to test the screen under different lighting conditions, but it looked good under the florescent and vapor lights at CES and had a reasonable angle of view that would allow 2 or 3 people to see the images. However, it is a little small to show images to more than a very small group. The brightness of the screen can be controlled through the brightness setting on the setup menu.

Flash

The built-in flash is relatively small and doesn’t have a particularly long range: Pentax clams less than 6.6 and 11 feet (with the lens on telephoto and wide angle settings respectively), but even this seems a little optimistic. In our admittedly limited testing, we found that around 5 feet is more realistic.

**Zoom Lens
**The 3x zoom lens is manufactured by Pentax and has a focal length of 5.5mm to 16.5mm. That’s equivalent to a range of 35mm to 114mm on a 35mm film camera: a reasonable range that’s pretty typical for point-and-shoot cameras. The aperture range of f2/.8 to f/4.8 is a little more limited than some similar models, but adequate for general use.

Design / Layout

Model Design / Appearance

Aesthetically, the Pentax Optio E10 is unremarkable and unassuming, but I would not call it ugly. The light gray case is made of plastic, giving the camera a bit of a cheap look, and the camera in hand feels a little less robust than those made of metal or a metal alloy. Although it does feel strong enough to stand up to casual knocks, the Optio E10 may not be tough enough to handle a fall of more than a few feet, or any serious torsion.

Size / Portability

At 3.4 x 2.4 x 1.3 inches, the Optio E10 is a little bulkier than some. The depth in particular is an issue. It’s a little too deep to comfortably fit into a shirt pocket. But it’s still a pretty compact camera that would fit into a coat pocket or small bag with ease. (Then again, what point-and-shoot isn’t?) It’s also lightweight at 6.3 ounces, including battery and SD card, or 4.6 ounces unloaded.

Handling Ability

The thickness of the Optio E10 does have an upside: it gives it a substance that makes it fit **

comfortably into the hand, with a more solid grip than many of the thinner point-and-shoot **models. While the shutter and zoom controls fall under the index finger and thumb, good luck stretching your thumb over to the mode dial on the top without dropping the camera. You really need two hands to operate the other controls.

Control Button / Dial Positioning / Size

The controls on the back of the camera (such as the four-way control dial) really do require two hand use: the 4-way directional control is a too low to be easily reached with the thumb. It’s perplexing why Pentax did this. Perhaps it’s their subtle way of encouraging two-handed, and therefore more stable, shooting? If so, they failed. Sorry, but this design is just awkward.

Menu

The tabbed menu is well structured, but the text can be a little difficult to read; the low resolution of the screen makes the text rather blurry. Most of the functions the user regularly need to access are easily available, however; such as the image size and quality, which can be accessed with a couple of button presses. 

---

Ease of Use

In the simple point-and-shoot mode, the Pentax Optio E10 is very easy to use. Heck, this is its main selling point. All of the settings are controlled by the camera, and you just point, frame, and shoot. The only real bugbear is that the LCD screen doesn’t give a great preview of the image. The low resolution screen makes it difficult to see the image in any detail and it is sometimes tough to check focus.

Modes

Auto Mode

There are two auto modes: Simple mode (where everything is completely automatic) and Program, which gives the user a little more control, such as control over the metering mode. This control is limited as there is no way to directly control shutter speed or aperture. The Optio E10 being a budget point-and-shoot camera, however, the exclusion of a control like this is not surprising.

The auto mode is a snap to use; as it should be on a camera of this class.

Movie Mode

The movie mode records video at a resolution of 320 x 240 at 20 frames per second in DivX format. This is a little below the now-usual 30 frames per second, and the movies did suffer, with some jerky motion. But they are adequate for short clips and mono sound is recorded as well. Inclusion of a 640 x 480 option would have been fantastic, but other models at this price point that do include such an option record it at an even jerkier 10 fps. This seems to be the happiest medium Pentax could find. One fortunate aspect of it: there’s no limit on the length of movies that can be recorded, other than what the memory card can store.

Drive / Burst Mode

The burst mode on the Optio E10 is a simple continuous mode. In our limited tests, we found that it managed fewer than 2 frames per second and was able to keep shooting for several seconds. A burst mode on a camera this inexpensive at all is surprising, so we won’t begrudge its low-average performance.

Playback Mode

The playback button on the back of the camera puts it into playback mode. This allows you to go from a thumbnail of 9 images to a 4x zoom in on the image. But the thumbnails are a tad small, and the grainy screen makes it hard to see any details. The 4x zoom is also a little less than some comparable cameras offer (8x exists on some) so you can’t get in close to look for fine details. Not that the poor LCD screen would permit such a thing anyway.

The E10 also lets users protect pictures from accidental erasure and resize images to a smaller size. Other than a slide show option (which excludes any exotic wipes, fades or transition options), these are the playback mode’s only other features. It’s a very pared-down feature set, and we were a little disappointing that other options, like crop or jump, were not included.

Custom Image Presets

Five shooting modes are available on the dial at the top of the screen: Landscape (which opens the aperture up), Night Scene (which slows down the shutter speed), Portrait, Sport (which speeds the shutter speed up), and Movie. This is significantly less than the range offered by many other cameras (10 or so has become the norm) but for a very basic point-and-shoot, it’s average, and even though it may be missing modes like Fireworks or Beach, the essentials are there.

Control Options

**Manual Control Options
**Manual control isn’t this camera’s forte: basically, it doesn’t offer much. There’s no manual exposure mode and no manual focus. There is, however some manual control over settings like white balance and ISO, but for the target audience, these may be better left on automatic anyway.

**Focus
***Auto Focus*

The multi-point contrast detection autofocus is a little sluggish. It often took several seconds of hunting around to find the focus point, especially in low light. This is too bad, as it is possible to find a decent autofocus on other cameras at this price point.

Manual Focus

No manual focus is included on the E10. It’s automatic only.

Metering

Unsurprisingly, the metering modes are pretty basic: you only get the choice of weighted or spot metering. The Optio E10 has none of the multi-zone evaluative modes that are present on Pentax’s higher-end models like the A10.

**Exposure
**A simple but functional exposure compensation mode offers adjustments for 2 stops up or down, in one third steps. That’s pretty typical for this type of camera and should be enough to compensate for most lighting situations such as backlighting, or an excessively light or dark background.

**White Balance
**Most users attracted to this type of camera will want to leave the white balance on auto, but there are presets if desired. There are settings for daylight, cloudy, tungsten, and florescent. There’s no way to input a specific color temperature or balance the camera manually, the latter of which is an inclusion we always like to see if possible, no matter the price.

**ISO
**The E10 has a rather limited ISO range of three settings: 64, 100, and 200. This could be a serious limitation for low light shooting: a maximum ISO of 200 is going to lead to long exposure times in anything but bright sunlight. But then again, if it did have a 400 setting, chances are that on a budget camera like this, the images would be incredibly noisy. However, nearly all competing models will extend beyond the ISO 200 limitation on this camera.

Shutter Speed

Shutter speed goes from 1/1000 of a second to 2 seconds. Higher shutter speeds can be useful for capturing sports action and the like, but 1/1000 is adequate for most purposes. Many point-and-shoots offer 1/2000 or at least 1/1400, however, so the E10’s options could be better.

**Aperture
**A range of f/2.8 to f/4.8 is a little smaller than most, and the lack of higher apertures limits the creative potential by narrowing the depth of field (the area into your shot that can be in focus). This might make it more difficult to do group shots and the like; but again, it should be fine for general use and snapshot portraiture.

Image Parameters

Picture Quality / Size Options

The E10 offers four JPEG image size settings: 6, 4, 2, and 0.3 megapixels. There are three compression settings: three stars, two stars, and one star. There’s no option to save RAW images, but that’s not surprising and generally isn’t seen until the $600 or so price point. With the highest image size and quality settings on the E10, you’ll get about 33 images onto a 128MB SD card.

Picture Effects Mode

The digital effects are limited to two: black and white, and sepia. Although they do what they say, you’ll be better off shooting the images in normal mode and processing the images on your PC if you can.

Connectivity / Extras

Connectivity
*Software
*Pentax bundles the ACD See Photo Manager package with the E10, which is a solid photo manager and basic editing package. Though the Optio E10 may skimp on some features, Pentax doesn’t usually doesn’t skimp on software.

Jacks, Ports, Plugs

The socket on the left of the camera case does double-duty as a USB and video out socket, with separate cables for each. This means that you can’t use a standard USB cable. The USB/video out plug is a unique shape; so if you loose the cables, you’ll have to buy new ones from Pentax.

Direct Print Options

Support is included for DPOF and PictBridge, so you can print directly from the camera to a compatible printer. This is pretty standard theses days, especially so on a model which has ease of use as a main selling point.

Battery

The camera is powered by either two AA disposable alkaline batteries or 2 Nickel-Metal Hydride rechargeables. Pentax claims a battery life of 80 and 300 shots for each respectively. While we were not able to test the veracity of these claims; if true, this is comparable to other models using the same battery types. Pentax offers an optional battery charger that can recharge 4 batteries at once; but batteries can not be charged in the Optio E10 itself.

*Memory
*The E10 has 10MB of internal memory; an extremely small amount that made us wonder why *

*Pentax bothered at all. Then again, it could have been even smaller at say, a measly 8.3MB. (Casio, we’re looking in your direction.) Only 10 MB is enough to hold only 2 or 3 images at the highest quality and size settings. Fortunately, more storage is available through the SD card slot on the bottom of the case.

Overall Impressions

Value

At fewer than two hundred bucks, the Pentax Optio E10 is decent value for the money. While it’s not bursting with fancy features or the latest image processing capabilities, it does a solid job of taking pictures quickly and easily. But be warned, Pentax: Olympus manufactures the D-series, a line of low-end point-and-shoots similar to the E10, many of which go for less than $200 online and Panasonic just released a $200 camera with their trademark MEGA optical image stabilization - a feature that alone makes it a better value than the E10. If the new Pentax cameras are sharper than the Olympus models and less noisy than the Panasonics, then the Pentax cameras will definitely be a worthy foe. But Pentax will have to price competitively. Keep checking back for our full review, with full testing results.

Who It’s For
*Point-and-Shooters – *The E10 is easy to use without any fuss: the textbook definition of a point-and-shoot camera.

*Budget Consumers – *At less than two hundred bucks, this is a fine choice for the budget conscious shooter who isn’t concerned about the lack of manual control.

Gadget Freaks – This isn’t the smallest, fanciest or most drool-worthy camera by a long shot. Serious gadget freaks wouldn’t be caught dead with it.

Manual Control Freaks – Give this camera to a manual control freak and they’ll probably throw it straight back in your face. It just isn’t the type of camera for them.

Pros / Serious Hobbyists – This camera isn’t suitable for serious users as anything other than a frivolous $200 decoration. They’ll likely find the lack of modes and manual control a serious problem.

Conclusion

**
****Conclusion**

It’s obvious that the E10 has been built to appeal to users on a budget. It’s not that the Pentax Optio E10 is a bad camera – it’s just that there really isn’t anything outstanding about it. In our limited testing, we found the image quality to be fair, but not great; there’s a certain amount of noise at the maximum ISO setting of 200, and this low maximum ISO will be a problem for low light shooting. At this price point, however, building an outstanding camera is incredibly tough. The E10 is an inexpensive camera, and you get what you pay for. The E10 will cost $199.99 and will be available in February.