Pentax Optio S4

Opinion: I kept on putting off buying a digital camera because they either were not small enough or didn’t include the features that I wanted. The Optio S4 was the response to all of my excuses. This camera is SMALL!!! Add to that a 3x optical and 4 megapixel and you have a great balance of cost, size and features that met my needs. What made this camera of choice over the comparable Casio was the Pentax’s external batter charger and easy to transport data/AV cables. No need to worry about clunky docking ports.

Opinion: Few months ago my good old Minolta dimageX started to act funny (ok, i dropped it couple of times and it got wet etc.) and the pictures became out of focut most of the times... I then started to look out for replacement and since i got used to small size cameras i wanted the new one be at least as small and handy as the X. my friend bought the Minoltas Xt and it was really going to be the one i buy too untill I saw the Pentax Optio S review... this little camera was more or less everything i wanted it to be... but hey... S4 was coming so I decided to wait for it instead. I kept on reading all the forums about the S and S4 and finally got one for me too. Ordered it from Germany (I live in Finland) and it took about 5 days to get it...nice :) Now I have been using the camera in differend situations and i must say that its totally awesome... This camera goes everywhere with me and i made a case out of altoids tin can (put some stuffings and it still fits like a glove). Really cool...

Opinion: I have owned Nikon Coolpix 880 and 990s as well as the original Canon Digital Elf, which is my wife's camera now. I still use the 990 for work (I am a radiologist and take photos of medical images). I may reconsider this though, this little camera seems so capable. I use the macro mode a lot for work, and until now I haven't found a camera as good as the Nikons. But the Super-macro mode on this camera seems every bit as good so far, and the resolution is better. The camera is incredibly convenient. I was looking for a very convenient camera just for "messing around," thinking I'd get one of those nifty credit card jobs. Until I saw this -- high quality in a miniature package. I keep it in an Altoids box in my back pocket, and don't even know it's there! And so far the photos I've taken under normal conditions have been all I could hope for. I still have to arrive at the proper settings for sharpness, saturation, and contrast. I hope Phil's review will shed some light on these. If anything, the images are a bit too detailed -- not very complimentary for complexion flaws, etc, but that may have been the conditions under which I was shooting. Highly recommended!

Opinion: I had been following the digital camera marked for quite a while, waiting for the right combination of price, resolution, features and size. And with the Optio S4, it was finally impossible for me to wait any longer.

The main adventage of this camera is the portability; you literaly bring this camera everywhere! And compared to the competition (like the Casio EX-Z4 or Canon IXUS 400) it is way smaller and still has at least as many options and features - and even more importantly; not as many annoying drawbacks. It's a win-win situation!

Now for the actual performance:
I really can't complain about image quality - sure it is a little soft at the corners, but if I wanted superb pictures I would have brought my Nikon SLR. But I don't because it's simply too big to haul around all the time.
The videoclips are fair, but again this is not a videocamera - there is just no comparison (and this goes for ALL digital cameras, IMHO!!).
I am impressed by the performance of the tiny flash - much better than I expected.
Software: Very solid ACD software. Need I say more?

In short: Highly recommended!