Pentax Optio A10

Reviewed August 2006

Test Photos

STILL LIFE

This subject is photographed in a room that has a mix of fluorescent and incandescent light, but which is not brightly lit. The camera's flash is used to add fill light. The backdrop is 1.95 m (6.5 ft) from the camera.

With the flash set to Auto, and the sensitivity set to 50 ISO, the Optio A10 yields an image that is too dark. To increase the effect of the flash, sensitivity must be set to Auto, so that the camera can boost sensitivity as it needs. Indeed, then the A10 yields a perfectly well-exposed image, but sensitivity has increased to 200 ISO. However, at this sensitivity, noise is detectable in shadow areas.

ZOOM PHOTO

Now we zoom in on the on the centre of the image above to gauge the sharpness of the image at the zoom's maximum setting. The camera remains at the same distance as in the preceding photo.

At the telephoto end, the maximum aperture of the A10 becomes f5.4, and once again the camera increases sensitivity to 200 ISO. The colours the camera yields are, as with the wide angle shot, very natural. Although the telephoto shot contains more detail than the wide angle shot, the image is a bit grainy and some noise can be seen in dark areas.

The Optio A10 has two macro modes: a standard Macro mode that allows the use of the zoom, and a Super Macro mode that locks the zoom at the wide angle end.

With the standard Macro mode, the camera is able to focus on a subject that is 12 cm (4.8 in.) from the front element of the lens. At this distance, the zoom can be used a bit up to a focal length equivalent to 55 mm, allowing the camera to capture a field of view that measures 7.5 cm (3 inches) when measured horizontally.

BUILDING PHOTO

This image is our "outdoor" test. The architecture of the building, in particular the angled girders, immediately show the presence of jaggies. The shadowed entrance can also often reveal the quality of the exposure.

With photos captured on a sunny day, the precision of the colours the A10 captures is notable. Colours look very natural, and in particular, blues and greens are very life-like. Moreover, with these ideal conditions the A10 yields an image that is perfectly exposed.

Seen at full size on a monitor, the image reveals no chromatic aberration, nor any barrel distortion.

But the effect of the compression — quite strong even at the highest image quality — can be detected in the slight fuzziness that can be seen on the edges of the building's beams.

ZOOM PHOTO

Zooming in on the entrance of the building, the shadowed entrance takes on a greater importance for the metering and can cause an overexposure of sections that are directly lit.

Like the wide angle shot shown above, the telephoto shot is also perfectly exposed and both shadow areas and directly lit ones show detail, as the metering avoids both underexposure of the shadow areas, and overexposure of the bright zones.

Although the A10's zoom is only equivalent to a 114 mm, the camera is able to capture the little sign on the right door; and as can be seen when the image is inspected at 100%, it would be almost legible if the compression was a tad less strong.

NIGHT PHOTO

As this camera is capable of a long exposure, a photo taken at night is included.

Using the Night Scene mode, the A10 is able to capture an exposure as long as 4 seconds. A 4-second exposure is quite short to photograph a night scene, and demands a relatively bright or well-lit subject.

In all modes, including the scene modes, the A10 allows the user to set the white balance, and the sensitivity. Therefore, with a maximum aperture of f5.4 at this zoom position, a sensitivity setting of 200 ISO was required to obtain a sufficiently bright image. Similarly, the white balance was set to Tungsten, allowing the camera to record more natural colours.

Worth noting, the stabilizer should be turned off when the camera is mounted on a tripod at it can cause an interference when the camera is already perfectly steady.

As observed earlier, at 200 ISO some noise can be seen in the image, even after the camera applies noise reduction.

The A10 uses a dark frame noise reduction process, capturing a second image of the same duration but without opening the shutter, allowing ambient noise to accumulate in the frame. The second frame is then used to identify noise in the first photo, and delete it. Still, the process lowers the image sharpness, an impact that gets added to that of the compression.