Pentax Optio 33L

The Pentax’s LCD has to be good, mind, because there’s no optical viewfinder at all. This makes its ability to fold flat to the backplate less useful than it might be because then there’s no way to compose shots at all. It does at least protect the LCD when the camera’s not in use, though.

Other interesting features include a ‘virtual’ mode dial. This takes the form of a mode ‘wheel’ displayed on the LCD, where you can choose standard Program mode, Night Scene, Movie, 3D image, Panorama assist, Auto bracketing, Digital filter and Picture.

We’ll look at some of these in more detail shortly, but the Picture option deserves a special mention. This is where you’ll find the Pentax’s selection of scene modes, including Landscape, Flower, Portrait, Self Portrait, Soft, Surf & Snow, Sunset and Illustration. These are all nested under the Picture option, but if all this is starting to sound a bit complicated and involved, don’t worry – in use, it’s actually quite straightforward and easy to operate.

Given that the LCD is the only means of composing shots, it’s just as well that it’s sharp and easy to view in broad daylight, though in dim indoor lighting it does start to get a little grainy in appearance.

Pentax Optio 33 starts up in around three-four seconds, which is acceptable. Focus confirmation takes a little under a second – again, quite acceptable, but not the fastest.

Photographic results are very good. If anything, the Pentax’s image processing is on the conservative side, with slightly muted colours and an exposure system that occasionally tends towards underexposure. Overall crispness and fine detail rendition is very good, especially in a digital camera this cheap and, at the same time, packs in more features than just about any other camera at that price.

Controls include three different light metering: systems – multi-pattern, centre-weighted and spot. The argument for spot metering is clear enough, since it enables you to take an exposure reading from a small area of the frame when the lighting conditions are awkward. But why centre-weighting, especially since it would appear to simply be a cruder form of multi-pattern metering? It’s because multi-pattern metering can be a little too clever. Put simply, there will always be subjects which will fool your camera’s metering system, but with intelligent multi-pattern systems it’s not always easy to tell when this will be or what you need to do about it. By comparison, it’s pretty easy to work out when a centre-weighted reading will need to be modified, and how much by.

When you do need to apply exposure compensation, Pentax Optio 33 makes it easy. All you need to do is press Left or Right on the navipad to reduce or increase the exposure accordingly. Actually it’s almost too easy. You might find yourself inadvertently applying exposure compensation when you didn’t mean to, just because you’ve accidentally pressed the button.

There are times when you need even more insurance, and that’s what auto-bracketing does. Pentax Optio 33L will take three shots at three different exposures (you set the increment using the menus) so that you can choose the most successful later. Not only that, you can even apply auto white balance bracketing too, to make sure that your pictures come out the right colour in awkward and unpredictable lighting conditions. Not that the Pentax routinely needs these adjustments. For the vast majority of scenes a simple point-and-shoot approach will yield perfectly good results.

Pentax Optio 33L has plenty of features, but these wouldn’t amount to much without a properly thought out control layout. It’s got this too. On the back you’ll find buttons for cycling through the flash and focusing modes, and the focusing button reveals another of the Pentax’s abilities – manual focusing. You can enlarge a portion of the image for greater focusing accuracy, too. As with other cameras, the navigational controls are used as shortcuts in shooting mode. Here, pressing Up will activate the self timer (with delays of ten seconds or two seconds). Pressing Down displays the on-screen ‘virtual’ mode dial we’ve examined already.

You’ll still need to use the menus for many of the Pentax’s features, and here the navipad proves usable enough, though the central OK button is a little too easy to press. Amongst the menu options you’ll find sharpness, saturation and contrast controls, plus spot and wide area autofocus options. The Optio 33L might be pitched at a budget price point, but there’s a lot of photographic control on offer here.

Pentax Optio 33L really is a good digital camera if you’re looking to get as much for your money as possible. It does feel a bit plasticky, admittedly and the flip-up LCD never proves to be quite as useful as you imagine it might be. Indeed, you feel obliged to close it down whenever you’ve finished using the camera, and this makes it all the more fiddly to get ready for action when you do need it -adding to the (already slow) start-up time. Nevertheless, it’s packed with enough goodies, including a novel ‘3D mode’ (that’s what the stereoscopic glasses included with the camera are for) and a panoramic option, to make its price tag look even more tempting.