Golden, Colo. — Pentax introduced a pair of svelte 7-megapixel point-and-shoot digital cameras yesterday.
Both the Optio T30 and M30 will ship in March and are less than an inch thick. They are also compatible with the new SD High Capacity (SDHC) memory card format as well as standard SD cards.
The T30 sports a 3-inch touch-screen LCD, 3x optical zoom lens, face recognition autofocus/auto exposure for shooting portraits and an ISO-boosting shake-reduction mode with sensitivities as high as ISO 3200. There is also an electronic shake-reduction mode for movie recording that narrows the field of view to reduce the impact of jittery hands.
Using the touch screen and included stylus, consumers can draw or write on images in the My Drawing mode. A Stamp function lets users add illustrations to photos in-camera. Other menu functions can be accessed via the touch screen as well.
The camera is 0.75 inches thick and features 16 scene modes, an image recover function for restoring deleted images, 19MB of internal memory and red-eye correction. It will retail for a suggested $349.
The Optio M30, for a suggested $199, will be the first in a redesigned M-series with a thickness of 0.7-inches. It features a 3x optical zoom lens, 15 scene modes, an ISO-boosting digital shake-reduction mode (ISO 3200), and an auto-macro mode for focusing from 4 inches away and closer. There is also a super macro mode for focusing on subjects as close as 2 inches.
The M30 also incorporates face recognition AF/AE for exposing portraits, VGA/30 fps movie recording with digital stabilization, 21MB of internal memory and red-eye reduction.
