Pentax intros X90 ultra-zoom camera

 

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Posted on 25 Feb 2010 at 17:16

Pentax has announced the Pentax X90 ultra-zoom camera, an update to the previously released X70, which was the company's first attempt to get into the ultra-zoom camera market.

Like its predecessor, the X90 uses a 12 megapixel 1/2.33in CCD sensor with image stabilisation built in; it's a CCD-shift type mechanism and worked well in the older X70. ISO sensitivity ranges from 80 to 6,400 and this is one area where we hope Pentax has improved things since the X70, as noise was a pretty big problem for the camera at even moderate ISO settings.

The camera's key feature is its huge 26x optical zoom lens which offers an effective focal range of 26-676mm at f/2.8-5.0 in a relatively lightweight and compact body. The lens also has a 1cm macro mode, which allows you to capture dramatic close-up images.

Not surprisingly, the optical viewfinder is an electronic one. It has 200,000 dots and has dioptre adjustment so that you can adjust the viewfinder's focus so that it matches your eyesight. On the back, there's also a 2.7in 230,000 dot LCD screen with anti-reflection technology.

Being a super-zoom, the X90 includes full manual controls, as well as shutter and aperture priority modes in addition to the programmed auto exposure mode. On top of that, there's an auto picture mode, which selects the most appropriate shooting mode for a given subject or scene. The modes include Landscape, Portrait, Night Scene, Night Scene Portrait, Flower, Sport or Standard and there's also an automatic macro mode which detects that you're trying to take a macro photo and switches the lens's focus range in the process.

Autofocus has also been upgraded since the X70 and includes a better automatic face detection algorithm which can detect up to 32 faces in the image field in just 0.03 seconds. There's also a new face filter, which makes the subject's face appear slightly smaller than in reality in recorded images.

The system also incorporates automatic exposure, which allows you to automatically trigger the shutter when you smile and detects if your subjects might've blinked when you released the shutter. It'll be interesting to see if this works well with people from East Asia, as cameras using similar technology from other manufacturers have warned of people blinking when in fact their eyes are wide open.

Battery life was another issue for the X70 and Pentax says that the X90 has approximately 50 per cent longer battery life than its predecessor, which it reckons translates into around 250 extra images per charge.

The rest of the X90's specs mirror the X70, meaning there's support for a variety of image formats, a burst shooting mode of around 11fps (you're limited to shooting at five megapixels in continuous shooting mode, though) and 720p HD recording capabilities at 30 fps. The Pentax X90 uses supports SD and SDHC cards as well as Eye-Fi WiFi-enabled SD memory cards.

Pentax said that the X90 will be on sale from the end of March and will retail at £329.99 - we'll bring you a review of the X90 as soon as we can.

Author: Tim Smalley