Pentax Optio P80 12.1MP Digital Camera with 4x Wide Angle Optical Zoom with Shake Reduction and 2.7-inch LCD (Black)

by Pentax

Product Details

• Product Dimensions: 3.8 x 2.1 x 0.8 inches ; 4.2 ounces
• Shipping Weight: 7 pounds (View shipping rates and policies)
• Shipping: This item is also available for shipping to select countries outside the U.S.
• ASIN: B002KE48JS
• Item model number: P80 Black
• Average Customer Review: 3.6 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (27 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #8,926 in Camera & Photo (See Top 100 in Camera & Photo)
• Date first available at Amazon.com: August 4, 2009

Product Description

Color: Black

From the Manufacturer

The 12.-megapixel Optio P80 sports a compact, ultra-slim body that is ideal for travel, events and day-to-day activities. With a high-grade aluminum-alloy housing and delicately contoured chrome-plated design, the Optio P80 offers a stylish, elegant finish. Pentax’s innovative Sliding Lens System* and space-efficient high-density mounting technology contribute to the small, compact, lightweight body. Just over one-half inch at its slimmest point, the Optio P80 features an optical 4x zoom lens and a large 2.7-inch LCD monitor.

Optio P80 Highlights

High image quality
Combining approximately 12.1 effective megapixels with the Pentax-developed imaging engine and high-performance Pentax zoom lens, the Optio P80 delivers brilliant, high-quality images with well-defined details. Even when images are enlarged, the photographer is assured of sharp, high-resolution prints with edge-to-edge sharpness.

Optical 4x zoom lens for excellent zoom coverage from wide angle to telephoto
The ultra-slim Optio P80 comes equipped with an optical 4x zoom lens covering focal lengths from 4.9mm to 19.6mm (equivalent in the 35mm format to approximately 27.5mm wide angle to 110mm telephoto). This wide zoom range is perfect for a wide variety of subjects and scenes from spectacular landscapes to group and indoor shots in a confined space.

Greatly improved Automatic Face Detection
The Optio P80’s Face Detection AF & AE function is greatly improved. In addition to automatic detection of up to 32 faces in a mere 0.03 seconds, the function now detects a subject facing the camera from an angle or with a tilted head. Other features that help photographers produce better portraits with minimal effort include:

A Smile Capture mode, which automatically releases the shutter the moment the camera detects the subject’s smile;

A Blink Detection function, which warns the photographer when the subject’s eyes close at the time of shutter release;

A new Small Face filter, which makes the subject’s face appear smaller than reality in relation to the body, without compromising the overall balance of a portrait.

High-quality, widescreen HD movie recording
The Optio P80 captures beautiful widescreen HD movie clips at 16:9 aspect ratio (1280 x 720 pixels)* at a frame rate of 30 frames per second.
_{* When the Optio P80’s AV output terminal is used, movie clips are output at standard definition. If the user wishes to playback movie clips at high-definition proportions (1280 x 720 pixels), the data must be transferred to a personal computer for playback.}

Triple anti-shake protection to prevent different types of camera shake

• Pixel Track SR mode: When recording still images, the Optio P80’s Pixel Track SR (Shake Reduction) mode effectively compensates for camera shake by processing affected images.
• High-Sensitivity SR mode*: When it detects low-lighting conditions in still-image shooting, the Optio P80 automatically raises sensitivity to as high as ISO 6400, making it possible to use a higher shutter speed. This effectively minimizes the adverse effects of camera shake and subject motion blur under poor lighting conditions.
• Movie SR mode**: During movie recording, the Optio P80 prevents blurry video by effectively minimizing annoying camera shake through the use of exclusive software.

_{*When the High-Sensitivity SR mode is selected, the recorded size is fixed to 5M (2592 x 1944 pixels).
** When the Movie SR mode is selected, the angle of view becomes narrower than normal shooting.}

Additional features

• Vertical Snap mode to capture vertical-position images with the same ease of operation as a mobile phone
• Auto Picture mode to automatically select one of eight shooting modes for the optimum result
• A variety of digital filters, including the new retro Toy Camera filter, to add distinctive visual effects to recorded images
• Dynamic Range adjustment to prevent overexposed and underexposed areas in images
• Favorites function to save reduced-size files of favorite images in the camera and recall them at will
• Digital Wide mode to create a panoramic, ultra-wide-angle picture (equivalent to an image taken with an approx. 20mm lens in the 35mm format) from two images
• Frame composite function (with 90 frames stored in the camera) to shoot or compose images with decorative photo frames
• Image recovery function to recover accidentally erased images

Product Description

The ultra-slim PENTAX Optio P80 digital camera features a lightweight design in three fashionable colors including Black, Pearl, and Mint. This stylish camera features a lightweight body with advanced features including 12.1 megapixels, a 4X wide angle optical zoom, HD video capture, Shake Reduction, Face Detection and Smile Recognition. Great shots come easily with an Auto Picture mode that selects from eight shooting modes. The large 2.7 inch LCD ensures accurate composition and playback of still images and video. Sensitivity up to ISO 6400 boosts shutter speeds to freeze subject movement for blur-free images even in low lighting.

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

25 of 26 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars It works, but a limited camera for detail work., December 29, 2009

By 

AmelAmel (Stuttgart, GER/PDX, OR) - See all my reviews

Amazon Verified Purchase

This review is from: Pentax Optio E80 10MP Digital Camera with 3x Wide Angle Optical Zoom and 2.7-inch LCD (Black) (Electronics)

So I will start off by saying that cost was of major concern when I was shopping for my camera, and the price, honestly, is pretty good. But I'm here to tell you what you are and aren't getting for that money.


Value-
I admit, I was purely going by review ratings (kind of), capabilities, name brand and price when I was shopping. But the price was pretty good for what it is, and the video features of this camera were better than others that were in the price range. The positives are the included USB cable but on the other hand, since it takes AAs, no rechargable batteries were included, instead just two alkalines were packed. You'll have to get your own memory card too, but in this day and age, they're realtively cheap anyways.


Appearance-
The slick black design is really nice and the contrasting chrome lens framing is good balance. It is by far more attractive than my old Nikon 5200. The big screen is also really nice, and the buttons are simple, minimalistic and quite just how I like them.


Construction and Quality-
The camera is solid and balanced and the buttons have a nice feel to them. However, while excused by the low price, I have my doubts about the plastic housing and its durability. Will the glossy black shell lose its luster and color?

Also of concern is the trap door for the batteries and memory card. My old Nikon had a nice sturdy metallic housing, but its ultimate failing was the battery trap door that didn't sit flush after one of the tabs broke. The same design was used for this new Optio, and it worries me a bit more, since the Nikon had a latch holding back the battery while the trap door on this Optio has to do the work of holding back the two AA batteries.

Made in China. This was a negative for me, but discussing my reasons would be off topic. Decide for yourself. If I would have known and was made aware of competing products that weren't made in China, I would have probably gone with something else.


Practicality-
It fits in my pockets just fine, no protruding parts, so it slides in and out of jean pockets just fine. The use of AAs is a great concept, since you don't have to buy model specific batteries, instead just alkalines or AA rechargables. Great for a couple years down the line, if you want to keep the camera and the rechargables are shot. Cheaper and easier to find!

The filing system is quite handy, and instead of just one folder of all the pictures you've ever taken, it creates a new folder for every day and sorts the pictures by date. In playback mode, simply press the zoomout button 3 times, and it will show you a calendar with all the days that you took pictures. You can also disable this feature if you want to.

There is also an easy mode that turns off all the advanced information and just tells you the amount of pictures you still have room for, and the battery life, with larger text. This is useful if you don't want all the complexities or have a hard time seeing all the small text.


Performance-
The camera would be just fine for someone who wants a camera that will take decent looking pictures, nothing more. The focus, the colors, and the sharpness are all fine most of the time. But if you want manual settings, like to get close ups or have other performance requirements, that is where the camera falls short. I'm not talking about megapixels, so if thats the only thing you understand or want to hear about, skip this section.

Autofocus: The focus works great on subjects that are far away to an armslength away. But if you enjoy getting close to flowers or small, detailed things, you'll find yourself having to tell the camera to refocus a few times before you get a sharp image. My old Nikon was better in that respect, and I got really nice images of coins, flowers, and patterns, something that I'`m having more trouble doing. I find myself having to keep the camera a bit further away from the subject, even with macro. But of course, with twice the resolution, I can crop off the extra background and still have a high definition image.

Autofocus (cont.): In my old Nikon, you had the capability of defining which area of the picture you wanted autofocus to focus on, something lacking here. I miss that feature alot, but its not a complete deal breaker.

White balance: The WB is not user definable or atleast I haven't figured out how to force a WB setting. The auto WB works most of the time, but there have been times where the WB was completely off and it was refusing to make white look white. Unacceptable if you want that control over the consistency of color in camera.

Video: The video works fine, but the audio quality is not quite what I'd like it to be. But then again, I do alot of video work and probably have higher expectations than most and I usually just use this camera for still images and not so much video. But the quality is acceptable and presentable. No real zoom during recording.


Summary and concluding remarks-
This camera looks good, is built well and all at a great price point. The camera lacks a metal casing, but otherwise feels fine, but the battery trapdoor is of some concern. For normal, pedestrian uses, the picture quality is fine, but the camera lacks user-definable settings for more sophisticated and/or demanding users. The video quality is ok and will do just fine for a family video or your vlogs. It takes widely availabe and cheap AA batteries and SD memory cards, so no worries there.

Is this camera full of features and advanced capabilities? No.
Does it take good pictures/videos? Yes.
Are there better cameras? Yes.
Its it worth the price? At the Amazon discounted price w/ free shipping, yes.

10 of 10 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars Excellent, April 7, 2010

By 

150 F3 - See all my reviews

This review is from: Pentax Optio P80 12.1MP Digital Camera with 4x Wide Angle Optical Zoom with Shake Reduction and 2.7-inch LCD (White) (Electronics)

Pentax's P80 is a joy to own and use.

I've tested it thoroughly for 2 weeks. Its photos are technically pleasing 95% of the time. I never knew a camera could be this nice.

I love how the self timer works. It stays in effect until turned off, so I can do a long session of tripod mounted macros without having to use buttons and menus. There's even an option to have it remember the self timer setting when the camera is turned off and on. This will save huge amounts of time for night photography.

The interface was very easy to figure out. I was operating it with ease right away.

Video quality is excellent. 30 fps 1280x720 clips look incredible on an HDTV. The camera allows white balance and EV adjustments in video mode. The live histogram is accurate and useful to help capture the ideal image. Audio sounds clean and great too. The self timer function is available in video mode, so camera shake at the beginning of clips can be eliminated. Unlike QuickTime, the camera's AVI file format easily imports into Windows Movie Maker and Virtual Dub.

I use D-Range to control shadows and highlights. It works! I took a picture of new, bright white sneakers with black accents in noon sunlight and it turned out perfectly, even with contrast set to high. That kind of subject has far too much dynamic range for other cameras I've used.

I wish it had a black and white mode so I could simply get BW photos directly. There's an in-camera conversion option, but in the opinion of this reviewer it's a waste of battery life and storage space. Picasa does very good BW conversions of P80 photos. Other cameras have problems with challenging BW subjects like white and chrome cars on sunny days, but Pentax has it figured out. I'm always amazed to see wide, perfectly contained histograms in test photos I was sure would be failures. It's hard to make it clip shadows and highlights.

I didn't expect such useful results from a small, high resolution sensor. To my delight, the sensor delivers 12 good megapixels. Detail is excellent. The camera doesn't aggressively reduce noise and smear colors together.

It does lens correction. 28mm shots with strong barrel distortion are beautifully converted to scenes with straight lines and edges. It happens fast too.

I'm a very negative, fault finding person. It says a lot that this product exceeds my modest expectations.

After experimenting with its huge amounts of adjustment settings, I will use it in Auto ISO, high contrast, high sharpness, medium saturation, daylight white balance, D-Range shadows and highlights, and 7 megapixels. EV adjustments are rarely necessary thanks to D-Range processing. Leaving it at -0.3 appears to work well most of the time.

If I'm in a photographically ideal situation, I'll turn off D-Range and go to ISO 64 at 12 megapixels. (The lower limit with D-Range on is ISO 125.)

The tripod mount is centered, so the camera won't easily tip over with mini-tripods. I use a mini-tripod as a camera grip for more stability. It compensates for the P80's small size and light weight.

The camera has some purple fringing issues, so I can't give it 5 stars. They're easy to take care of in editing. I bought the thing mainly for black and white, so purple fringing doesn't matter much to me.

I tried its highest saturation setting and would not recommend it for normal, colorful scenery. None of the color channels blew out, but maximized blue skies and sunlit green plants looked too weird for my taste. High saturation would work better with drab subjects to bring out more color than the eye sees.

10 of 10 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Pretty good little camera, January 31, 2010

By 

Bob Forehead "Bob" (Washington, DC) - See all my reviews

Amazon Verified Purchase

This review is from: Pentax Optio P80 12.1MP Digital Camera with 4x Wide Angle Optical Zoom with Shake Reduction and 2.7-inch LCD (Black) (Electronics)

Overall, I find this a pretty good little digital point and shoot, and a good replacement for our earlier model of Pentax Optio. For indoor shooting, I am impressed at the depth achieved by the flash -- much better than our earlier model. In fact, I really wasn't expecting such good results. If I were to fault the camera at all, I would say that the colors in the photos are vibrant -- perhaps a bit more vibrant than in actuality. Still, that is a minor problem -- if a problem at all -- for a digital camera in such a portable package.

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