I bought the correct Digital Camera at last!

A year ago I made a bad purchasing decision, see my review of the Audiovox DC400 digital camera. A month ago I finally decided on the Fuju Finepix A350 which met my criteria, except the picture quality wasn't as expected so it's been returned.

Two weeks ago I ordered a Pentax Optio 60 for 170 Dollars and have been very happy with my purchase of this 6 Mega Pixel camera.

Comes with?
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The camera comes with 2 AA batteries but I purchased 4 AA Ni-MH rechargeable batteries as I understand they last much longer. So far that appears true with over 80 test shots taken and the LCD screen indicates still at 3/4 power.

It comes with a 12Mb inbuilt memory but that only holds 4 of the 2.85Mb high resolution images. I purchased a 512Mb SD Card from Best Buy for 30 Dollars which will hold about 150 shots of the high resolution 2848x2136 pixel photos or 40 minutes of the 320x240 AVI video with sound from the built in microphone.

You also receive a USB cable to connect to the computer, Video cable so you can play the AVI video back on TV, carrying strap and CD's with the software Driver and ACDSee software to download photos to your computer.

What buttons are there?
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On the top is the Shutter and Power On/Off buttons (takes about 5 seconds to be ready for a shot in automatic mode).

The power button is in the middle of a selection dial:
- Simple: Fully automatic mode for those quick snaps
- Video: Take 320x240 video. Creates an AVI file. There's a built in microphone, front pointing
- Setup: Set Date/Time, Language, NTSC/PAL, etc
- Manual: Where you can override Aperture, Exposure and other settings
- Av: You select aperture, the camera chooses shutter speed
- Tv:You select shutter speed, the camera chooses aperture
- Pict: Select picture type portrait, landscape, sport, night scene
- Program: Shutter and aperture set by the camera, you select other options

On the back is the Menu button to change picture quality and other settings. The options change depending on which of the selection dial settings is chosen.

There is a good sized 2 inch LCD screen to set up the shot or display menu options.

A Display button lets you change what is shown on the LCD screen.

There is a Playback button to switch between Record and Play mode.

There is a 4 way controller dial on the back with an OK button in the centre to confirm changes.
The 4 options are:
- EV Override
- Self Timer: 2 second delay, 10second delay and two shots after a 10 second delay
- Flash: Auto, Red-Eye, Always Flash, Never Flash
- Landscape, Macro or Standard picture

There is a Viewfinder with Diopter adjustment.

There are Zoom In/Zoom Out buttons. There is 3X optical zoom then a 4X digital zoom. You can see on the LCD when the digital zoom starts and obviously the quality is reduced when digital zoom is used.
In Playback mode the Zoom function lets you zoom into a picture or display thumbnail sets of pictures.

Underneath the camera is the 2xAA battery compartment and memory card slot. There is a screw mount for a tripod.

On the left side is the USB in socket and a 3V DC input socket (power supply not supplied with the camera)

The front has the 3x optical 7.5-22.5 / 4x digital zoom lens, viewfinder, sensor, microphone and flash.

Software
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The supplied ACDSee software was easy to install. For simple downloading of photos it worked fine. It also has editing facilities to crop, resize, etc images and also supports AVI file editing including sound.

On a PC (I don't have Mac experience) the camera also appears as a Mass Storage device so you can simply copy the image and video files too and from the camera.


Conclusion
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The camera does have many controls but they have been reasonably intuitive for me. In "Simple" mode it takes nice pictures.

I couldn't find a host for the 2.85MB images but resized to 500k here is a Macro, flash photo taken in Simple mode
img.photobucket.com/albums/v304/Locksmiths/IMGP0050.jpg