Pentax Q10

The Pentax Q10 ($599.95 direct with 5-15mm lens) is the company's second attempt at making a petite camera with interchangeable lenses. Its first, the Q, had a lot of charm, but suffered from some performance issues, and was a tough sell at a steep $800. The Q10 is physically identical to its predecessor?although it ships with a different bundled lens?and is offered at a lower price point. It's a cute camera, and performs slightly better than the Q, but in the year-long interval since the Q's release other manufacturers have outpaced the improvements that the Q10 offers. It may appeal to a certain type of shooter, but it's not a camera we can recommend over excellent competitors like the Olympus PEN Mini E-PM2 and our Editors' Choice Sony Alpha NEX-F3, which are available for the same price.

Design and Features
The Q10 measures 2.3 by 4.0 by 1.3 inches (HWD), making it the smallest interchangeable lens camera on the market. It's light at 6.4 ounces, and while the body is mostly plastic (the Q is constucted from sturdy magnesium), the camera feels quite solid. If you don't need interchangeable lenses, you can get any number of point-and-shoots with images sensors that are physically larger than the 1/2.3-inch 12-megapixel sensor used by the Q10, including our Editors' Choice compact Sony Cyber-shot DSC-RX100, which has a comparatively huge 1-inch sensor and sells for only $50 more than the Q10.

The 3x 02 Standard Zoom Lens covers a 27-83mm equivalent field of view and is a little large for the camera?it's narrower in diameter than the 14-42mm (28-84mm equivalent) lens that Olympus bundles with the PEN Mini, but matches its height. This prevents you from sliding the Q10 comfortably into your pocket with the standard lens attached?a feat that the Q was able to achieve as it shipped with a fast standard-angle prime lens. That lens is currently unavailable for purchase on its own, but Pentax expects to start selling it as a standalone optic next February. Our Q10 review unit was silver and black, but there is also a red and black version available.

Aside from the change in material, the Q10 is identical in design to its predecessor. There are three control wheels?one on the front and two on the top. The front wheel is programmable?by default it can apply one of four art filters, but it can be changed to adjust the color space, apply digital filters, or change the image aspect ratio. The filters will pair with any of the inexpensive toy lenses available for the Q system?the 03 Toy Lens Fish Eye, 04 Toy Lens Wide, and 05 Toy Lens Telephoto?any of these lenses paired with the filters will give your images a Lomo toy camera look.

On top you'll find a standard Mode Dial which lets you select from the standard Program, Aperture Priority, Shutter Priority, Manual, Movie, and Scene modes. There is one unique setting?Blur Control. Because the Q10 has a small sensor, it's harder to get a shallow depth of field like you can with a camera with a larger image sensor. It applies a software filter to blur parts of the image to simulate the bokeh effect that you can get with an SLR or other large-sensor camera. This feature works, but applying it to a shot takes about 6 seconds of processing time?which is simply unacceptable.

On top behind the Mode Dial is a standard control wheel, which can be used to adjust the f-stop in Aperture Priority, the shutter speed in Shutter Priority, and so on. Rear buttons are there to adjust Exposure Compensation, ISO, the Self Timer, Flash output, and White Balance. There's a built-in flash on an articulating arm. It can fire when flush with the body, but you can reduce the risk of red eye by flicking the switch that raises it above and away from the lens. There is a hot shoe to connect an external flash, but it doesn't support an EVF?an add-on feature that is fairly ubiquitous in the compact interchangeable lens sphere. You can add one to the Olympus PEN Lite E-PL5, although that camera lacks a built-in flash.

The rear display is 3 inches in size and features a 460k-dot resolution. It's reasonably sharp, but others cameras in this class have moved to sharper 920k-dot LCDs. The Sony NEX-F3 offers a wider tilting display with a sharper resolution that also tilts up or down?but that camera is bigger than the Q10 and its kit lens, which must cover an SLR-sized APS-C image sensor, is quite large.

(Next page: Performance and Conclusions)

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