I met Juan Buhler in San Francisco today and we planned to do some shooting and to compare some lenses. The weather turned on us, and instead of making photographs we ended up in Gasser's camera shop looking for odds and ends and taking up the sales staff's time. Business was slow - very slow - so we got good service <g>.
We looked at the Optio 410 - the 4 megapixel camera. I can't speak for Juan, but I was surprised at how small and compact it was, and how simple the controls seemed to be. It seems like a nice little camera for people who want to make little snap shots, and may be a nice alternative to a P&S. However, Mike Johnston raved about the Optiio 310, and, based on what we saw with the 410, which has h higher number of pixels, these cameras are useless for prints about 8x10 or larger. We looked at a couple of 8� x 11 prints and there was obvious pixilization (if that's the right word) in shadow areas and where light and darker areas met. For example, the line where an arm ran alongside a little girl's dress was jagged and of a darker color than the areas on ether side of the line. Now these were prints made specifically to show off the qualities of these cameras, and they were terrible. If this is any example of normal quality from these cameras, they're not ready for prime time yet. It'll be a l-o-n-g time before I give up my Pentaxes and Leicas for this kind of quality. I'd like to know how it is that someone like Mike can gush lavish praise over these cameras when the results I've seen are so poor? Is there a way to get better quality from them, or is 8X10 about the limit that they'll go? -- Shel Belinkoff mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED] - This message is from the Pentax-Discuss Mail List. To unsubscribe, go to http://www.pdml.net and follow the directions. Don't forget to visit the Pentax Users' Gallery at http://pug.komkon.org .
