The Pentax Optio WP
The Ultimate Fly Fishing Camera

by

July 2005

The New Waterproof Pentax Optio WP

One of the items in last year's "Holiday Gifts for the Flyfisher With Everything," was Pentax's 2nd generation water resistant camera, the Optio WR. I was about to buy one, but I notice that they started to disappear from the online shop inventories. The reason was not fantastic demand – rather it was the relentless upgrade cycle that all digital camera manufacturer's face. Pentax had announced that the 3rd generation of their waterproof line would be released in the Spring of 2006, so shops stopped stocking the older model.

I'm glad I waited to see what the Pentax designers had come up with. The replacement for the WR is now the Optio "WP," which cleverly stands for Water Proof. It is Class 8 waterproof, which means that you can plunge it into a river and even take pictures underwater. So if you're wading with one of these in your pocket and you go for a spill, you no longer need to worry about the camera. Save your rod or flybox first!

I've always been a camera buff, but I quickly abandoned the SLR film camera when pocket-sized digital point-and-shoots (PAS) became affordable. There's an old photographer's saying that to get great photos the best technique is, "f8 and be there." Okay, I admit that unless you know cameras this joke probably went out the window. However, the main point is that unless you have a camera with you when the action happens, the most expensive equipment in the world is no use at all. Hence, the miracle of the modern digital camera. They fit comfortably in your vest pocket and are available in a wink to record a beautiful rainbow trout sulking at the bottom of the net and the spectacular sunset at the end of the day.

PFF member, Kelly Bandlow, purchased a new WP just before we headed off to Alaska this spring. The photo store had just taken shipment of them and they unpacked the incoming box just to sell one to him. He let me borrow it a couple of times during recent fishing trips, so I have used it enough to review this camera from a fly fisher's point of view. The bottom line is that I believe this is, hands-down, the best camera for our sport. I'm currently saving my pocket change so I can buy my own.

Features

Aside from being waterproof, this camera offers many nifty features that I found useful. Since I don't have enough space to discuss everything here, I'll only concentrate on the most interesting or novel features in this review.

• Fast Startup Time: One of the annoying characteristics affecting most digital cameras, particularly PAS's, is the delay between the time you press the "On" button and the time that the camera is actually ready to fire. This can be extremely annoying when you have a flopping fish in one hand, a rod tucked under your arm, and you're trying to get a quick snapshot but forced to wait for the camera to "boot." Because the WP's lens mechanism is located completely within the camera's body, (there's no lens barrel to extend), it wakes up quite quickly. I timed it at a little less than 2 seconds, a bit faster than my Canon S400 Elph.
• Huge LCD screen: Similar to the current crop of PAS cameras, the WP sports a 2-inch (diagonal) LCD screen that is crisp and bright. Because the screen is so large, there is a lot of real estate for displaying useful real-time data regarding the exposure and camera settings. I was particularly impressed by the real-time brightness histogram, which is a useful diagnostic for judging the dynamic range of your photo before you press the shutter. Of course, much of this information is interesting only if you're a camera nerd; if you're a Luddite, it is simple enough to toggle the screen to a mode where no on-screen icons clutter the display.

An example of a Optio WP macro shot

• Excellent macro mode: Whether it is flies, fish, or macro invertebrates (e.g. bugs), fly fishers have a natural tendency to take pictures of small stuff. In the old days, doing this required a special lens for close-up work, called a "macro" lens. Most PAS cameras now have a mode that effectively reproduces this effect. From my own experience, the best digital cameras for macro work are the Nikons. Nevertheles, the WP's macro mode is pretty capable, able to shoot down to less than 0.5 inches away from the subject with reasonable sharpness as shown above.

Fine details in the previous macro photo example

• This next shot (above) crops the previous photo to show how much fine detail is actually captured by the camera. Notice the exquisite detail; particularly noticeable are the corner's of Washington's mouth and eyes.

• Easy-to-use presets (shooting modes): The purists in the crowd always want complete control over every aspect of the camera and exposure. However, the target audience for digital PAS's lies at the other end of the spectrum – amateurs with very little interest in learning the nuances of photography, but who want their photos to look good. To accomodate this market while at the same time appealing somewhat to the camera geeks, the WP provides a huge array of preset "modes" designed for specific shooting conditions and demands. Each mode is optimized for a particular situation. The documentation lists the following presets: landscape, flower, portrait, panorama, underwater, surf & snow, sport, pet, candlelight, fireworks, self-portrait, food, and museum. There is also an additional mode that the user can pre-program themselves. Of course, there is the default mode with standard settings (oddly called the "Green" mode), which is fine for most typical conditions. So while the WP does not give the user complete control over aperture and shutter speeds, it does offer quite a range of possibilities for those who like to play with the settings.

These are the four features I personally found most interesting and useful. For a full summary of all the technical bells and whistles – and believe me I have just scratched the surface here – visit the website, Digital Photography Review [www.dpreview.com]. This is the best online site for researching cameras and gear. They do not have a full review of the WP yet, but there is a Optio WP's feature list. Also, you can read user comments on the open forum discussions by searching for "Pentax Optio WP" in the forum section of dpreview.

Trade Offs

No review would not be complete without a discussion of the Optio WP's shortcomings. My first critique is a problem that plagues all PAS digital cameras. Because the cameras are so tiny, the CCD sensor, which plays the role of the "film" in the camera, is miniscule. One consequence of this miniaturization is that the dynamic range of PAS cameras is more limited than film. As a result, photos with both extreme brights and extreme darks will experience "clipping" -- information will be lost on one or both ends of the dynamic range. (If you would like to learn more about the physics of this phenomenon, ask Mike McGuire, who is an expert on this subject.) For the best results, the photographer must pay careful attention to situations that contain these extremes. Not surprisingly, the WP suffers from this problem. However, in the case of bright situations such as a beach or white water, the WP offers the "surf & snow" preset which promises to mitigate some of these problems. (I did not test this, however.)

It appears that manufacturers and consumers have decided that the single metric used to compare these cameras is the Megapixel rating (e.g. the number of pixels captured by the sensor). Unfortunately, for a given camera size and sensor area, as the pixel count increases the problem with dynamic-range clipping only gets worse. By the way, did you know that the digital cameras on the Mars Spirit and Opportunity rovers are only 1-Megapixel? Clearly, the lens quality and sensor area/size make a huge amount of difference too.

Here are some additional critiques of the Optio WP:

• No optical viewfinder: Those of you who are used to film cameras or like to conserve battery life by turning off the LCD screen will be disappointed to find that Pentax has dropped the manual viewfinder on this camera. Quite honestly, however, my Cannon has a viewfinder, which I never use.
• No manual, aperture or shutter preferred setup modes: Like most PAS cameras, there is no manual exposure settings, so the internal computer is always controlling the exposure levels. As I mentioned earlier, the operator is offered a limited range of control by using the many available preset. Moreover, it is possible to set the camera to over or under-expose shots through an "Exposure Compensation" setting.
• Small "On/Off" button: I know Pentax does not want users to accidentally power up the cameran and waste the batteries, but I found the button extremely hard to operate. And I have small hands.

Last Thoughts

The list price of this camera is $350 but like all things digital, it has fallen quickly. The street price as I write is now hovering around $300. This price includes the camera, a battery, the charger, all the necessary cables for downloading photos to your PC, and a CD of capable software useful for managing and processing digital photos. However, you'll need to buy a memory card. Current prices for a 512 MB SD card is about $50. This is enough storage to hold about 200 photos taken at the Optio's highest resolution. One good thing is that the prices of memory cards will always be cheaper in the future.

A sample photo - A Feather River petroglyph!

If you want to capture some great fishing memories, but don't want to risk ruining a $300 investment in a river, this is the camera for you. It fits neatly in a vest pocket and is available at a moment's notice. I'm expecting that as more of you move to digital photography, you'll want to email all your amazing shots to the website editor so that he or she can share your adventures with the rest of the club! As a closing anecdote, I was driving with Kelly up to Fuller Lake when his cell phone went off. It was Ron, our Alaskan guide from April. He said that every group of anglers he guided this spring had an Optio WP – so he went out and bought his own!

– Rodney Chun