Customer Reviews

Pentax Optio W80 Waterproof 12.1MP Digital Camera with 5x Wide Angle Triple Shake Reduction Optical Zoom and 2.5 inch LCD (Azure Blue)

5 star:		(37)
4 star:		(22)
3 star:		(10)
2 star:		(11)
1 star:		(18)

 

 

The best digital camera my husband and I ever owned was a Pentax W10 - it lasted for years and took great photos.. very resilient. We figured that if a W10 is this great that a W80 would be even better but we were sadly mistaken after receiving our W80 and taking a few photos. At first, when all the photos we took turned out grainy I figured it was the settings that needed to be changed.

As a military photojournalist, I shoot daily with a Nikon D3, I know how to change settings and reduce the ISO to make the photo less grainy - and even after I exhausted all changes to the settings, the photos were still unimpressive. We went outside thinking that more lighting would mean better focus and better photos - but even they were a little soft and not that great.

I might recommend this for the outdoorsy type but for someone like my husband and I who are looking for a point-and-shoot camera that takes impressive photos (without fumbling through settings all the time) it was not for us. We are in the process of returning it.

I pre-ordered this camera to replacing an aging Canon. My main criteria was to have a camera that can be brought on ski trips; on the boat; canoe trips; and hiking. Used at the Grand Canyon and was very pleased with the quality of the pictures. (I am a casual user not a photographer). If you purchase this camera be sure to buy an additional battery! Would recommend spending about 15-20 minutes getting used to the camera before using in activities. Based on the reviews, the Canon is a better unit, but this one is slim and fits into ski jackets and life preservers.

I would have given it 5 stars, but I have to agree that there is some noise in average, everyday shots on this camera when taken with the automatic default settings.

The camera feels small and tough, and I haven't had the short battery life that others have commented on (seems like I get about 15 hours or so of off and on use per charge). It can take AMAZING shots if you take a little time to learn the settings. Manual macro shots of up-close items look terrific, and the panorama feature on this camera stitches separate pictures together better than my old Kodak 1063 did.

The underwater shots look pretty good, especially if taken on days with sufficient sunlight, and I'm not seeing any signs of the camera leaking.

Overall I'm really pleased with this little camera. It has a lot of neat features if you just take the time to learn about them. Originally I was deciding between this camera and an Olympus 1050sw, but my friend with the Olympus can't take shots that look nearly as good as what I've been able to take with my camera, so I'm very happy overall.

Just bought this camera given anticipated buzz.

Admittedly, I have not tried it underwater, or tested its ruggedness. But I am sending it back because it won't even take normal pictures accurately without graininess, blurriness and movement. Also, the delay is far too long, and image stabilization does not work accurately. Additionally, if subjects are moving, it's quite difficult to get a reasonable picture in low-ish light. To be fair, I tried a variety of mode settings including auto and a variety of manual settings, and frankly my iPhone took better pictures (without a flash!). In fact, the best pictures I took were in "green mode", and these were not really comparable to a generic 3-5 year old digital camera.

Maybe this camera has a niche use for underwater/etc only, but I had planned on taking "normal" pictures of reasonable quality with it as well, and I just couldn't find a way for this to work, so this is a non-starter for me.

I should have waited for the reviews to come out before taking the plunge:

see http://www.dpreview.com/reviews/Q209waterproofgroup/ for comparisons to D10 and TS1. Of note, even the W60 performed better in this review!!!

On a recent trip to the Mediterranean, my trusty old Nikon L11 died (the LCD screen cracked).
So, when I got home, I wanted to look for something a bit more rugged, and [...]

I figured I'd wait until Labor Day sales, but when I found this advertised in an Amazon email, and after reading the review at [...]I went for it.

The Pentax was [...] over my budget. So I bought it in gray. It's totally worth it.
It's easy to learn, fairly straightforward, and takes nice pictures.
I even got to use the old Nikon's measly 1 gig SD card.

I said it takes nice pictures. If you want great pictures, save your money for an SLR.

I am very satisfied with my purchase, which, by the way, got here in two days.

I preordered this directly from Pentax, and I've had it for less than a week. I know someone with a W30 who is very happy with his, so I figured this would be much better. So far, I'm very disappointed. I'm comparing it to my Canon SD850 by shooting macro, interior and exterior scenes. I have left the settings in auto mode and set it to record highest quality. The W80 produces very noisy images. Flash results seem to be a bit erratic. Very poor image quality in low-light. Side-by-side photo comparisons on-screen show better images with my Canon.

I also figured that since there is no moving lens, the W80 would have excellent battery life. Canon battery is 1120-mAh and W80 is only 680-mAh. The actual battery life is commensurately poor. I can get by on a weekend trip with lots of photos with only a single battery in my Canon, but I'm sure I would need to take two or three with the Pentax.

I really wanted this camera to work out, but I'm about to send it back. Anybody else have some feedback on this camera??

I really struggled with my purchase of this camera because I needed it for a specific purpose. All the reviews for low light imaging were bad. But I needed a camera with the ability to take shots at a specified time interval (a great, rare feature) and to do so in low light.

First, the interval feature is worth the price of the camera. I can have the camera take a shot every minute or 5 minutes or whatever I set and catch 1,000 images. When I have speaking engagements or teach a day class, I can set up the camera in a corner and let it shoot every minute. At the end of the day, I can have 300 or 500 images or more to review. I always get some good ones. And, if you want to do time lapse, you can get really cool stuff with this camera.

But, if I'm giving a lecture, I can't have a flash going off every minute. So I set the ISO at 400 and hope for the best.

Bottom line? Great shots, even in low light. You just have to get the settings, of which there are hundreds possible, right!

Battery life? Look, it's a waterproof camera and it fits in the palm of your hand. Yes, if it took 4 AAs it could last longer. But the battery is great for such a small battery. It really is. If you know about this stuff, I have 15 digital cameras, you'll know this is great camera for the price. Get a spare battery or two and an external charger. Then go make some cool time lapse movies!

Chris Reich

I purchased this camera to replace my Canon SD 450. I recently took it on a trip to San Francisco and to Monterey and I am very pleased with all of my pictures taken with it. The zoom is very nice and I especially liked the 28mm wide angle. The battery does run down, but I carried a spare and had no problems. The digital zoom is very good. I haven't tried it under water yet, but am looking forward to using to see my 4 yr old grandson swim underwater. The movies I did take were very good also. Overall a much better camera than some of the reviews have talked about.

I have been using this Pentax series of camera since the very beginning with the Optio43WR and sometimes i think that is still the best one to use.

Pentax is trying to cram too many options into one instead of focusing on a quick start and quick focus to shutter ratio. I find that the camera often is trying to think for me instead of just taking the picture.

The quality above 200ISO on this camera is not good and if you take on at night, make sure your lens glass is clean, otherwise the dust specs show up as little white freckles all over the place.

While i still prefer this waterproof camera over the Olympus and Samsung models, I am excited to see Canon in the portable waterproof game (still waiting for them to slim it down some though Canon PowerShot D10 12.1 MP Waterproof Digital Camera with 3x Optical Image Stabilized Zoom and 2.5-inch LCD) and I hope that Nikon gets in the game real soon too.

Net-net, if you want a camera that is good for drinking with and getting random shots, this is a good one, just make sure your battery is charged or you have an extra because the battery life sucks on this camera.

I hope that this helps some.

Tim
[...]

Being that the camera is supposed to be 12.1MP very dissapointed I'm sending it back with all the stuff that came along with it. The pics were fuzzy on the LCD screen then they were fuzzy when they came out. I cannot get a crystal clear picture on this thing. The only good thing about the camera was the accessories. If there is a way to get a clear picture let me know. Too much money for this product.