Pentax W90 Black

Pentax W90 Black
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I used this camera for a week and returned it to Amazon.

The good.

1. It is waterproof. Took to the pool and used it for an hour and it did great.
2. Takes good video underwater.
3. Panoramic mode and Digital Microscope mode are really cool and work well.
4. Picture quality is pretty good.
5. Colors are accurate
6. Size and weight are great. Very easy to take everywhere.
7. I think it looks great.
8. Feels very solid and well made.

The bad.

1. The video quality is terrible. It is not HD video. It may be HD resolution but the video is so smeared and poor quality that it might as well be just standard def.
2. Can't zoom or focus while taking video. This was the deal breaker for me.
3. No orientation sensor. This should just be standard on any new digicam.
4. Automatic flash always uses red eye reduction. I wish autoflash would just use regular flash. This may not be a con for some people but to me it was annoying. I had to manually set to force flash to use regular flash.
5. No image stabilization
6. Video in HD mode is limited to 10 minutes regardless of flash memory size.

EDIT:

Because someone pointed out that this review could use some clarification.

The underwater video quality is much better than its "out of water" video quality. I don't expect much underwater and it met my expectations underwater. Out in the air, I expected crisp video that changes focus and you can zoom with. It is not crisp. It does not focus - whatever you have focused on at the start of the video is where the focus is stuck at for the remainder so if you've focused on something close to start and you pan away from it to something far away, that will be completely blurry. The reverse is also true. The only zoom that it has during video is digital zoom which makes an already poor picture worse.

It does not have true image stabilization which means that it shifts either the lens elements or the sensor to stabilize the image. Pentax uses software to try to emulate this - they call it pixel track. Some other camera manufacturers boost the ISO and call that "anti-shake". Both of these are misleading to the uninformed public. The difference between real image stabilization and these software methods is like the difference between real optical zoom and digital zoom.. both appear to do the same thing but only one truly does it.

You can goto youtube and look for video samples taken both with the Pentax W90 and the Panasonic TS2. The difference is dramatic.

I think if video is not important to you, this is a good camera. I think if video is important to you, this camera is subpar.