Pentax Optio A30 digital camera announced

Focus on anti-shake technology

22 February 2007 11:33 GMT / By Stuart Miles

Pentax has updated its Optio A20 with the Optio A30 model offering 10 megapixels in a compact shape.

The new camera which will be on sale from March at a guide price of £199.99 will feature Pentax's anti-shake reduction technology, a 1/1.8 inch CCD and an smc PENTAX zoom lens.

The camera boasts enhanced anti-shake technology that features three new functions; improved shake reduction accuracy; a Digital SR mode that automatically changes the camera's sensitivity according to the brightness of the subject, to effectively reduce camera-shake and subject blurring; and a Movie SR shake reduction function exclusively for capturing movies.

Housed in a tough, lightweight aluminium casing and finished in black, the camera also sports a 3x optical zoom camera also features a new 2.5-inch LCD monitor.

The Optio A30 is also equipped with "Face Recognition AF & AE" function that automatically detects and focuses on faces, regardless of where the people appear in the frame. In addition, optimal exposure settings are automatically conducted so that the areas with faces are not darkened even if there is backlighting.

Like previous cameras from Pentax, the Optio A30 is also DivX approved.

The camera is also compatible with new SDHC memory cards, in addition to conventional SD memory cards, has a Mode Palette provides quick access to 15 shooting modes and 15 playback modes, a "Green button" that enables users to assign functions that are frequently used, and recall them at a single touch, and approximately 22MB of built-in memory. It also supports PictBridge, DPOF functions, Exif Print, and PRINT Image Matching III.