Pentax Optio RZ18 review

Our image quality tests revealed ups and downs, too. The lens performed admirably, the only notable weakness being slightly soft focus in the corners of frames at telephoto settings.

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The 18x lens belies the low price, and focus is extremely impressive.

The autofocus was sometimes incorrect, but it was easy to spot this on the 3in, 460,000-dot screen and have another go at the shot. The 16-megapixel CCD helped deliver lots of detail, but even in bright light there was a fair amount of noise. Still, we appreciate how the camera let a little noise through in bright conditions rather than smearing it to oblivion.

The same couldn’t be said of indoor shots, though. These were blotchy, streaky and smeared, and looked pretty unpleasant, even after resizing them to fit the screen. Settings were well chosen to strike a balance between the twin threats of noise and blur, but ultimately, this camera isn’t much better than a camera-phone for indoor photography.

Low-light shooting is marred by blotchy, streaky and smeared results.

It isn’t fair to compare this £100 camera with models costing two or three times as much, but at this price most people will be better off going for a camera with more modest specifications and better image quality, such as the Canon Ixus 115 HS. If you need a big zoom, perhaps to photograph wildlife, and don’t care about indoor photography or video, then the RZ18 is a decent budget option.