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  • Physical Tour

  • Components

  • Design / Layout

  • Modes

  • Control Options

  • Image Parameters

  • Connectivity / Extras

  • Overall Impressions

  • Conclusion

  • Physical Tour
  • Components
  • Design / Layout
  • Modes
  • Control Options
  • Image Parameters
  • Connectivity / Extras
  • Overall Impressions
  • Conclusion

Physical Tour

The front of the svelte Optio S7 shares the clean design as the rest of the camera (a minimum of fuss). From the top-left clockwise, we glimpse the shutter button, the flash and the IR illuminator, then the remote control receiver and the lens itself. When the camera is turned off or in playback mode, the lens completely retracts within the camera body using what Pentax describes as a "unique sliding rail system". It looks like any other telescoping lens to us, but it works. There is also a large sticker than reminds you of the capabilities of the camera, including the zoom and movie capabilities.

**Back
**At the back we have the large, bright 2.5-inch LCD screen as the main attraction. Next to that is the large zoom thumb control, the playback button (which switches the camera to playback mode) and the multipurpose directional control. When you are shooting, this doubles as a control for the self-timer, the focus mode, the shooting mode and the flash. Below that is the menu button and the green button, which switches the camera to what is called "Green mode". This has nothing to do with trees or environmentally safe construction; it is a basic mode where most of the controls are automatically set.

Left Side

The left side of the camera is a bit like the space between Paris Hilton’s ears; it has no real purpose other than to fill the space with something that has no particular function (there are also a couple of screws).

Right Side

On the right side of the camera is the cover for the battery and SD card slot, push this down and it slides off. The cover feels pretty robust and should keep out dust and grunge, but it isn’t waterproof. Above this cover is the lanyard loop. That ugly metal thing isn’t the standard wrist strap, we photographed the camera at the Photokina show, and the metal strap is to protect  the camera from being stolen. The real wrist strap is a standard plastic type.

**Top
**On the top of the camera we have (from the left) the speaker, the power switch and the shutter button. When the camera is on, the shutter glows green; a nice touch if you’re trying to take pictures of the interesting things that happen in the dark.

**Bottom
**The only interesting thing on the bottom of the camera is the tripod socket, located centrally. You can’t see it in our photo as the Pentax people started shouting at me when I tried to peel off the dummy sticker, and I’m a sensitive soul. But it is there.

Components

**Viewfinder
**No viewfinder is present on the Optio S7; everything is done through the LCD screen.

**LCD Screen
**The LCD screen is a large, clear 2.5-inch model with 232k pixels. Images look impressively clear and bright on it when playing back photos, but we found the live preview to be a little jerky, only updating three or four times a second.

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Flash

The small flash is located to the left of the lens (looking from the front). Pentax quotes a range of 0.49 to 17 feet at the wide zoom setting and 1.31 to 8.9 feet for the telephoto. We weren’t able to test this at the Photokina show, but that’s a pretty standard range and is quite acceptable for general use.

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**Zoom Lens
** The zoom lens is an SMC Pentax model with 6 elements in 5 groups, and a focal length of 62mm to 18.6mm. That’s equivalent to a range of 37.5mm to 112.5mm on a 35mm camera; a relatively broad range (especially for a camera this small), but it is not particularly wide; you’d be hard-pressed to take a decent family group shot with a 37.5mm lens. A 4X digital zoom is also present, but this is best not used as it seriously affects the image quality.

Design / Layout

**Model Design / Appearance
**The Optio S7 has a stylish, clean design that makes for a very usable camera in a small, convenient package.

**Size / Portability
**At just 3.5 ounces and with dimensions of 3.4 by 2.1 by 0.8 inches, the Optio S7 is a very portable camera. It would fit nicely into a shirt pocket or small handbag, making it very suitable for nights out where you wouldn’t want to carry around a bigger camera.

**Handling Ability
**Although the S7 is a small camera, it fits comfortably into the hand, with the index finger falling naturally on the shutter button and the thumb onto the zoom control at the back of the camera. You’ll need both hands to use the menu, though. The menu and directional buttons are located too far down on the back of the camera to use comfortably with one hand.

**Control Button / Dial Positioning / Size
**Although the buttons are small, they are well-positioned and are separated enough that you won’t miss them. The zoom control is also a good size, with a positive feel so you know when you are pressing the button hard enough to zoom.

**Menu
**The menu system of the S7 is well-structured and easy to navigate, with most options where you would expect them to be. It’s accessed by pressing the menu button on the back of the camera.

**Ease of Use
**The Optio S7 is an easy to use camera with a pretty standard approach to the on-screen menus. That’s not a bad thing – it presents the features you most commonly use first, and doesn’t take a great deal of time to navigate. But there’s nothing revolutionary about the design and implementation of the camera. It just does the job cleanly and effectively.

Modes

**Auto Mode
**The Optio S7 has two automatic modes, green mode and the full auto mode. The full auto mode puts most aspects of the camera into automatic mode, so the user just has to frame the shot and push the button. It seems to do an effective job, although we were not able to give it a full shakedown at the Photokina show.

The green button on the rear of the camera enables "green mode", which is a sort of semi- automatic mode where the user can configure a preset group of options, and quickly switch to them by pressing the green button. It’s somewhere inbetween the full auto mode and the scene modes, and is a nice feature for those who like to configure the camera to their specific needs.

**Movie Mode
**The Option S7 is one of the first cameras that we’ve seen to save videos to the DivX format, which provides good quality in a small space. Two size options (640 x 480 and 320 x 240) and three quality options are provided. Audio is recorded along with the movies, but we weren’t able to tell much about the quality in the noisy Photokina exhibition hall. 

Control Options

**Drive / Burst Mode
**A basic selection of drive modes are included: single shot, self-timer and continuous. Pentax declined to supply any ratings for the frames per second of the continuous mode, but our limited testing seemed to indicate it was no more then a couple of frames a second.

**Playback Mode
**A good selection of playback options are provided, including the ability to create slideshows, resize and crop images, correct red-eye and even do some basic color correction. You can even add a frame to a photo. While these are nice features to have, they don’t produce results as good as an image editing program, so they should be used only when necessary.

**Custom Image Presets
**15 shooting modes are offered, and these can be easily accessed by pressing the bottom directional control in recording mode. They include the usual modes (Program, Night Scene, etc) plus a few unusual ones, such as the frame composite mode (which adds one of a number of built-in frames to the image) and shake reduction mode, which attempts to reduce the blur in images by increasing the sensitivity. However, this does have a price; the resolution is limited to 4 megapixels.

**Manual Control Options
**No fully manual mode is offered, and there is no aperture or shutter priority mode. This will limit the appeal for many photographers, but the camera is clearly aimed at point-and-shoot users, so it’s not a huge problem.

**Focus
***Auto Focus
*The Auto Focus on the Optio S7 seems snappy and responsive, and there are a variety of modes to use: Standard Autofocus, Macro, Infinity and a Pan Focus mode. The latter tries to keep both distant and close objects in focus. You also have a number of options for the active focus area: multiple (which scans the image and picks something to focus on), spot (which uses the center of the image) and automatic tracking, where the camera will pick a spot to focus on, and then try and keep track of the object, adjusting the focus as it moves. The latter did not seem that effective in our brief tests, but we’ll need to do more testing to get a true grasp of how effective it is.

*Manual Focus 
*A manual focus mode is included, but it is not very useful, although you do get an enlargement of the center of the image to check the focus on the nice 232k pixel display. It does however, take a long time to scroll through the focus range.

**Exposure
**Exposure compensation of two stops up and down is available, with a third of stop steps on the way. Again, this is pretty standard, and should be sufficient for most purposes. Without manual control over shutter speed or aperture settings, EV compensation is the only way to manually impact exposure on the Optio S7.

**Metering
**Three metering modes are offered: average, center-weighted and spot. That’s a pretty standard selection that should cover most contingencies, especially on a point-and-shoot model like this.

**White Balance
**Auto white balance and five preset modes are available, but there is no manual or calibrated setting. But again, most users of this camera likely won’t miss them.

**ISO
**The ISO range of this camera is somewhat limited; starting at 50 and only going up to 400. This may be an issue if you are planning on shooting in low light, 400 isn’t that high. We did notice some noise in images at the ISO 400 setting. However, if you don’t mind loosing some resolution, you can enable the Blur Reduction mode, which can boost the ISO up to 1600.

**Shutter Speed
**The shutter speed range of four seconds to 1/2000 of a second is, once again, fairly standard. There is no way to directly set the shutter speed.

**Aperture
**The aperture ranges from f2.7 to f5.6, a rather short range that would not provide much in the way of depth of field, although with smaller sensors, users won't necessarily need an f/8 or f/11 setting to get both the foreground and background sharp. 

Image Parameters

**Picture Quality / Size Options
**The image size options range from 7-megapixels to VGA resolution. The specifics are 7M (3072 x 204), 5M (2592 x 1944), 4M (2304 x 1728), 3M (2048 x 1536), 2M (1600 x 1200), 1024 (1024 x 768) and 640 (640 x 480). Three levels of image quality are available: Best, Better and Good. At best image quality and the 7-Megapixel size, the images are around 1.9 Megabytes in size.

**Picture Effects Mode
**A number of picture effects (which Pentax call Digital Filters) are available, which can do things like change the brightness, remove red-eye and add a decorative frame. We didn’t test these, but as a rule they are best avoided. Better quality effects can be obtained by using an image editing program.

Connectivity / Extras

**Connectivity
***Software
*Pentax includes a version of the image organizing and editing program ACDSee with the S7, which does a very decent job of organizing images, as well as offering basic editing tools.

Jacks, ports, plugs
*Only the basic connections are offered on the S7. There’s a power port, a USB port and an AV output port. There is no port for external docking stations or other accessories. Both are located under the battery port cover, so you need to open this to plug them in. But that’s a pretty minor inconvenience, and it does help keep the clean look of the camera.
*

Direct Print Options
*DPOF and PictBridge are supported for flagging images for printing on an SD Card and connecting directly to a printer without using a PC. Both of these are widely supported, and support for EXIF print and Print Image Matching are also included.

*Battery
*The Lithium-Ion battery is on the small side, but Pentax claims a life of around 180 shots. That’s on the low side (and we were not able to verify this), but it is sufficient for a couple of days of shooting if restrained.

*Memory
*23MB of internal memory is included, and SD Cards are the primary method of storing data. This is also one of the first cameras that we’ve seen that supports the new SDHC memory card specification, which opens the door for larger memory cards that could hold thousands of images.

**Other features
***Face Recognition* – In the portrait and kids shooting modes, the camera will use its facial recognition feature (developed by FotoNation) to try and pick out the face from the photo, then use this as the focal and exposure point. We didn’t get to test this feature in-depth, but it did manage to pick some faces out of the crowd in our limited tests. We’ll explore this further in our full review of the Optio S7 in the coming months. 

Red-eye correction – As well as a red-eye reduction flash mode, the S7 can process images to try and remove red- eye after they are taken.

Overall Impressions

**Value
**Priced at $349.95, the Optio S7 is in the middle of the pack for point-and-shoot cameras; there are cheaper ones, but there are also much more expensive ones. It represents a reasonable value for money, but certainly is not one of the stronger feature sets for the price. The camera does carry some interesting features and offers high resolution, but at a fairly high price

**Who It's For
***Point-and-Shooters* - Novice users and those who want to shoot without fuss will like this camera: it’s simple to use and takes good pictures.

Budget Consumers - There are cheaper cameras out there, but the S7 represents a pretty good value for money.

Gadget Freaks - It has a certain gadget appeal because it’s so small, but there aren’t enough buttons or fancy features to make it an alpha gadget-geek pick.

Manual Control Freaks - Give this camera to a manual control freak and they’ll thirow it back at you and run screaming out of the room.

Pros/Serious Hobbyists - Expecting a pro to shoot with a camera like this is like asking a race- car driver to go driving in a clapped-out Volkswagen Beetle.

Conclusion

**Conclusion
**The Optio S7 packs a good range of features into a small case. It takes smart-looking pictures, and is easy to use. It is obviously designed for point-and-shoot users; more advanced users will miss the manual shooting modes. But it does an effective job for what you need it to do; it take pictures quickly and efficiently if you don't mind spending over $350 on a new camera.

Meet the tester

Richard Baguley

Richard Baguley

Contributor

@@rbaguley

Richard Baguley is a veteran writer who has written about technology ranging from Alphabet to Zip file utilities. He has contributed to pretty much every major tech publication, including Amiga Format Magazine, PC World, Wired, CNET, Toms Guide, Forbes, and many others. He lives in the Boston metro area with his wife, dog, and an indeterminate number of cats.

See all of Richard Baguley's reviews

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