Gadgetory

hello and welcome to the TechnoBuffalo digital camera workshop I'm Mike Roman and today I'm reviewing the Pentax Q does the Q stand for quite lame or a quality digital imaging device find out after this awesome intro I'm back with the camera that represents the Lollipop Guild the Pentax Q is the world's smallest interchangeable lens system camera on the market and the reason is because this thing packs a back illuminated 12 megapixel one over 2.3 inch c MOS sensor that is the smallest sensor on any interchangeable lens camera in the intergalactic solar system let's put the sensor in perspective compared to the olympus EP m1 which has a 4/3 sized sensor and the Nikon 1j one which has a one inside sensor the Pentax qs one over 2.3 in sensor looks like an at stacked up to a praying mantis so let's talk image quality because the Pentax Q gave us a point-and-shoot size sensor we had more of a point-and-shoot performance I shot side-by-side with the canon powershot s 109 con coolpix p 70 100 in bright light the Pentax Q rivals the s 100 very good performance in bright light very few chromatic aberrations I just found a few purple fringing experiences along some highly contrasted edges but that was about it I favored the Canon as far as its high ISO performance the Pentax Q is still a very good high ISO performer but I think the nikon p7100 and canon s100 the Pentax Q little noisier also this camera shoots 1080p 30 frames per second video recorded in the h.264 codec now video quality and bright light pretty darn good but any time there's any hint or thought of darkness coming into the shot this camera is going to be noisy it's going to noise up the place so that's another downside I preferred the s 100 s HD video and the P 70 100 s video to the Q so to wreak the Pentax Q rivals some of the best point-and-shoot cameras on the market when it comes to image quality let's talk lenses the Q ships with an F 1.9 which is a very nice bright aperture lens it's a prime lens which means it doesn't zoom it's just flat right on there and it has manual focus ring right on it very nice lens we also have this optional viewfinder that can attach right to the the top which is a hot shoe of this camera very nice and it is optimized for the prime now there are also other lenses there's a 5 to 15 millimeter zoom lens there's also a fisheye and - toy camera lenses which are so small that they look like they came out of a 50 cent machine and that's part of the Q's allure this thing is tiny even the canon powershot s 100 is taller than it the Pentax Q makes the olympus EPM won the mini pen look like a monster truck and I absolutely love the styling of the Q it's got this retro front grip panel here it also has a front dial with four settings that dictate different digital filters and color accents we have a rear mounted control dial there's a rear 4-way directional pad with ISO and white balance flash self timer settings we also have an exposure compensation dedicated exposure compensation button and Pentax green button which is customizable the cameras got a great hot shoe on top for adding an additional flash or a viewfinder and it also has a great built-in flash that pops all the way up and it looks like Johnny Five from short circuit this flash is very bright so I had to dial back the evey steps while I was shooting with the Q also it has some great manual controls shutter speed that can dip down to 30 seconds with a Bulbul mode we also have white balance grid selection color grid and we have a built in neutral density filter and an ISO that reaches 6400 aside from that the Q and Pentax as a brand in my opinion has the best digital filters in camera built-in digital filters you can ask for out there so if you don't have Photoshop if you don't have access to advanced photo editing programs software the Pentax most Pentax cameras will really do you well this thing has 19 different digital filters with individually adjustable parameters the best thing about this camera also is that any of those 19 digital filters can be applied after you take a picture so you can just shoot raw you could shoot however you want and then it's applied right after the fact saves as a copy you could also develop RAW images right from within the camera it's a great thing this this camera really is a digital tool belt I did have a few gripes with the Pentax Q one it has a short battery life to the LCD screen if there's a 460k pixel resolution I think it needs to be bumped up to like a 920 in order to be competitive because it got a little grainy at times also I found the firmware on the Q to be a little sluggish at times the AF system was a little slow to respond also when I captured certain images depending on the filter or depending on if I was taking RAW images it took a long time to process before I could take the next picture or I could shut the camera off or I could jump into playback mode so firmware a little bit slow aside from that my major gripe with this camera is the price it's $750 shipped with the standard prime lens and let's factor in some things here if you go for the 5 to 15 millimeter zoom lens that's about 240 bucks if you go for the fisheye lens I think that's another little under a hundred bucks we're talking about a little over a grand for a camera with the basic one over 2.3 inch sensor and that's just too steep especially with the competitors out there you've got the Micro Four Thirds cameras yeah they're bigger they're not too much bigger you've got the Olympus EPM one you've got the nut new Nikon 1j one camera out there you've got a lot of the a Sony NEX series so the Pentax Q needs to be priced a little more reasonably but overall I have to be honest the Q is one of my favorite little cameras I've ever shot with this thing was just a blast the amount of times I went this is awesome while I was unboxing this camera total way past a hundred I mean this thing is just it's it's a lot of fun it really looks like a little toy camera that is capable of some pretty high-powered performance I would read commend the Pentax Q to a beginner or intermediate photographer or film student somebody who wants to retain the awesome size of a point-and-shoot camera but does not want to get bogged down with expensive lenses and cinder block around their shoulder like Nikon d7000 or AOS 5d Mark - even though they're awesome cameras this is a totally different market so this has been the Pentax Q review I'm Mike Perelman for TechnoBuffalo be sure to go to the site for the full review with image samples and video samples of this guy and any other camera related news reviews or stories go to TechnoBuffalo comm I will see you guys later