Pentax Imaging’s Optio W90 Named Gear of the Year Winner
Digital Cameras
Golden, CO—Pentax’s waterproof, shockproof, dustproof and coldproof Optio W90 digital camera is an Outside magazine Gear of the Year Award winner. The award is announced in the spring/summer 2010 Outside Buyer’s Guide, now on newsstands and available through September.
The eleventh generation waterproof camera is designed with the look of mountaineering equipment, comes with a woven fabric strap with a carabiner to attach it to a backpack and is built for the outdoors; its specs state it is waterproof to 20 feet for underwater photography, shockproof enough to withstand a 4-foot drop and coldproof to subfreezing temperatures.
A digital microscope mode with LED lighting helps capture small subjects as near as 1cm. Combining macro shooting capability from less than one inch with its digital zoom, the W90’s digital microscope mode magnifies the view to capture miniscule subjects too difficult to observe closely with the naked eye. Three LED macro lights on the face of the lens barrel help capture subjects such as plants on the LCD for extreme macro photography.
“This is one cool camera,” said Buyer’s Guide editor Sam Moulton. “With rugged specs and a design that makes it look like it belongs on a mountain trail, it offers everything an outdoor adventure enthusiast could want in a point-and-shoot camera. And when the shooting begins, the W90 brings some serious photographic punch.”
The W90 employs 12.1 megapixels, a wide-angle 5x optical zoom (28-140mm equivalent) and a 2.7-inch 16:9 widescreen LCD. It records 30-fps movies in widescreen 720p HD, and an HDMI port allows playback of images/video on HDTVs. Other features include: advanced pixel track shake reduction to capture “blur-free images in any lighting”; movie SR; an autofocus assist lamp; Eye-Fi wireless SD card connectivity for Wi-Fi transfer to a computer or online sharing sites, such as Flickr, Facebook and YouTube; auto picture mode; face detection (32), smile capture and blink detection; pet recognition that captures three preprogrammed pet faces in memory; a collage function; an ink rubbing filter to create monochromatic, high-contrast images; and12 digital filters. The Optio W90 has an MSRP of $329.99. pentaximaging.com