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Pentax goes to 12

With the first of the two cameras Pentax announced today, the company joins the club of manufacturers offering 12-megapixel compact cameras. The new Pentax Optio A40 will sport a 12MP CCD sensor, 3X optical 37-111mm equivalent f/2.8-5.4 zoom lens, and 2.5-inch 232,000-pixel LCD screen when it hits stores this month for about $300. It'll also include mechanical, sensor-shift image stabilization (Pentax calls it Shake Reduction), as well as ISO-boosting digital Shake Reduction, sensitivity of up to ISO 1,600 at full resolution and ISO 3,200 if you don't mind reducing the pixel … Read more

New pair of Pentaxes

Pentax very quietly announced two new cameras late yesterday. The first, an 8MP model called the Optio Z10, marks new territory for Pentax with a sliding lens cover that moves sideways and, like the sliding covers on Sony cameras, turns the camera on and off. Sony often gets credit for the sliding lens cover design in digital cameras, but many compact film cameras incorporated sliding lens covers years before Sony started using them in its digital cameras.

While those film cameras often had mechanical issues due to their extending zoom lenses, this Pentax has an internally zooming refraction lens. The … Read more

Pentax Photo Gallery treats you like a pro

A bit late to the party and wearing surprisingly Web 1.0 clothing, Pentax today launched the beta of its new Photo Gallery--a place where your photography can see and be seen right along with the pros, but very much in an old-fashioned, lone surfer, gallery atmosphere .

The Gallery has a curator of sorts, and at least initially, posting is by her invitation only. You can solicit an invitation with an e-mail to photogallery@pentax.com, at which point she'll provide you with the magic log-in or gently (I hope) turn you away and point you to Flickr or some other populist photo site. And the possibility of rejection--a key nonmonetary differentiator between the amateur and the pro--makes you feel like you're playing in the big leagues.

Being approved for posting, however, doesn't guarantee you can display anything you want; every image posted must be OK'd by the gatekeeper. However, once you've been approved, you can vote on other people's work for elevation to the Premiere Collection.

… Read more

Pentax goes 40-deuce with new compacts

'Tis the season for compact camera introduction, and Pentax is getting in on the action with its new Optio E40 and M40 models. Both include 8-megapixel CCDs, face recognition, and Pentax's ISO-bump Digital Shake Reduction.

The Optio E40 slightly edges out its sibling lens-wise with its faster 3x optical, 38mm-to-113mm f/2.8-to-f/5.2 zoom lens, but its 2.4-inch LCD checks in with 110,000 pixels (40,000 fewer than the M40), and its autofocus system relies on three focus points as compared to the nine points found in the M40. The M40 also bests the … Read more

Pentax's Super New SLR

With a nod toward the naming schema the company used in the late '70s when upgrading its popular ME film SLR to the ME Super, Pentax has announced its new K100D Super 6.1-megapixel digital SLR. An update to last year's K100D, this new SLR adds Pentax's Dust Removal system, as well as support for the company's high-end SDM lenses, to one of the more affordable digital SLRs on the market. Other than these additions, the K100D Super is essentially the same as the K100D, which included Pentax's sensor-shift Shake Reduction system, which helps reduce blur-inducing … Read more

Time-lapse photo system for amateur science teachers

This seems like a lot of money to do some time-lapse photography, but if you're an aspiring science teacher it will undoubtedly produce better footage of plants growing than the reel-to-reel films we were subjected to in grade school. This all-in-one system from Harbortronics can also provide a lesson in alternative energy because it runs on solar power.

The package includes a Pentax K110D Digital SLR, two 2GB memory cards and an automatic shutter controller for $2,300, according to Uncrate. Let's hope the photos look better than the system itself, which resembles a camera stuck in a … Read more

Vista supports Pentax 'raw' camera images

Pentax has released software that lets Windows Vista read and manipulate "raw" images taken directly from higher-end Pentax cameras' image sensors without in-camera processing.

Microsoft announced on its photo blog the availability of the Pentax codec used to encode and decode raw images.

Raw images are popular among professionals and enthusiasts who want more elaborate control over their photography, but supporting raw formats is tough, mostly because there's largely no standard from one camera to the next. Pentax is unusual in digital SLR (single-lens reflex) camera makers in that its high-end model, the K10D, supports Adobe Systems' DNG (digital negative) format … Read more