Pentax Optio P80 review

The P80 is incredibly small and light, and its curved metal body has a sophisticated elegance that few camera manufacturers manage to pull off. It’s well specified, too, with 720p video recording and a wide-angle lens with an f/2.6 maximum aperture that’s a little wider than most.

We like HD video modes on digital cameras but the P80’s isn’t the best. Focus was fixed for the duration of clips, as was the optical zoom, relying instead on a digital zoom that produced blocky results. Noise was a big problem in low light, and the 8kHz audio sample rate meant that sound quality was extremely basic.

There’s no optical image stabilisation for counteracting camera shake. Instead, Pentax offers a feature called Pixel Track SR. The name suggests that it’s more sophisticated than most electronic stabilisation techniques, which usually just involve hiking up the ISO speed. However, the results aren’t really much different, with heavy digital processing ironing out the details in shots.

Pixel Track SR takes a heavy toll on performance, but even without it, the P80 is slow. It took around four seconds on average between shots, but this delay was far from regular, sometimes taking up to six seconds. Continuous shooting lasted for just two frames at the highest quality setting, although dropping the resolution increased this to five.

The lens displayed sharp focus across its zoom range. The preview image exhibited heavy pincushion distortion at wide-angle settings, but the saved picture was corrected digitally. Colours were a little over-saturated for our tastes, but it was possible to rein this in. However, we also found that we had to adjust the white balance under artificial light to avoid an unpleasant yellow cast to pictures. High-ISO shots suffered badly from noise, but no more than usual for a 12-megapixel compact camera.

Image quality sits in the middle of the pack at this price, but with poor performance and disappointing video, there are better options.