Pentax Optio RZ18 Review
Image Quality
All of the sample images in this Review were taken using the 16 megapixel JPEG setting, which gives an average image size of around 2.5Mb.
The Pentax Optio RZ18 produces images of above average quality. It recorded noise-free images at ISO 80-100, but there's already some noise and slight colour desaturation at the relatively slow speed of ISO 200. ISO 400 and 800 show progressively more obvious noise and loss of colour, and the fastest full resolution setting of ISO 1600 is virtually unusable.
The Pentax Optio RZ18 handled chromatic aberrations well, with limited purple fringing effects appearing only in high contrast situations. The built-in flash worked well indoors, with no red-eye and good overall exposure, although there's noticeable vignetting at 25mm. The night photograph was only adequate, with the maximum shutter speed of 4 seconds not really long enough for most after-dark shots. The Dynamic Range setting didn't have too much effect compared to a standard image.
Anti-shake works very well when hand-holding the camera in low-light conditions or when using the telephoto end of the zoom range. Macro performance is good, allowing you to focus as close as 4cm away from the subject. The images were a little soft straight out of the Pentax Optio RZ18 at the default sharpening setting and ideally require some further sharpening in an application like Adobe Photoshop, or you can change the in-camera setting.
Noise
There are 8 ISO settings available on the Pentax Optio RZ18. The resolution is automatically reduced to 5 megapixels for ISO 3200 and 6400. Here are some 100% crops which show the noise levels for each ISO setting.
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ISO 80 (100% Crop) |
ISO 100 (100% Crop) |
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ISO 200 (100% Crop) |
ISO 400 (100% Crop) |
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ISO 800 (100% Crop) |
ISO 1600 (100% Crop) |
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ISO 3200 (100% Crop) |
ISO 6400 (100% Crop) |
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Focal Range
The Pentax Optio RZ18's 18x zoom lens offers a very versatile focal range, as illustrated by these examples:
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25mm |
450mm |
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Sharpening
Here are two 100% crops which have been Saved as Web - Quality 50 in Photoshop. The right-hand image has had some sharpening applied in Photoshop. The out-of-the camera images are just a little soft at the default sharpening setting. You can change the in-camera sharpening level if you don't like the default look.
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Original (100% Crop) |
Sharpened (100% Crop) |
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Chromatic Aberrations
The Pentax Optio RZ18 handled chromatic aberrations well during the review, with some purple fringing present around the edges of objects in high-contrast situations, as shown in the examples below.
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Example 1 (100% Crop) |
Example 2 (100% Crop) |
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Macro
The Pentax Optio RZ18 has a good Super Macro mode that allows you to focus on a subject that is 4cms away from the camera. The first image shows how close you can get to the subject (in this case a compact flash card). The second image is a 100% crop.
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Macro |
100% Crop |
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Flash
The flash settings on the Pentax Optio RZ18 are Flash-on, Flash-off, Red-eye reduction, and Soft Flash. These shots of a white coloured wall were taken at a distance of 1.5m.
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Flash Off - Wide Angle (25mm) |
Flash On - Wide Angle (25mm) |
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Flash Off - Telephoto (450mm) |
Flash On - Telephoto (450mm) |
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And here are some portrait shots. Both the Flash On or the Red-eye-Reduction settings caused a tiny amount of red-eye.
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Flash On |
Flash On (100% Crop) |
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Red-eye Reduction |
Red-eye Reduction (100% Crop) |
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Night
The Pentax Optio RZ18's maximum shutter speed is 4 seconds in the Night Scene mode, which is not very good news if you're seriously interested in night photography. The shot below was taken using a shutter speed of 2 seconds at ISO 800.
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Night |
Night (100% Crop) |
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Shake Reduction
The Pentax Optio RZ18 has an CCD-based shake reduction mechanism, which allows you to take sharp photos at slower shutter speeds than other digital cameras. To test this, I took 2 handheld shots of the same subject with the same settings. The first shot was taken with anti shake turned off, the second with it turned on. Here are some 100% crops of the images to show the results.
| Shutter Speed / Focal Length | shake reduction Off (100% Crop) | shake reduction On (100% Crop) |
| 1/5th sec / 25mm | |
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| 1/4th sec / 450mm | |
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Dynamic Range
The Dynamic Range setting corrects for either highlights, shadows or both, expanding the detail in the image. The effect of turning both on is quite subtle, though, as shown in this example.
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Off |
On |
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Digital Panorama
The Digital Panorama scene mode create a single panoramic picture by automtically stitching together either two or three images. Unfortunately it doesn't stitch the edges together very seamlessly.
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Panorama |
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Sample Images
This is a selection of sample images from the Pentax Optio RZ18 camera, which were all taken using the 16 megapixel JPEG setting. The thumbnails below link to the full-sized versions, which have not been altered in any way.
Sample Movie & Video
This is a sample movie at the quality setting of 1280x720 pixels at 30 frames per second. Please note that this 19 second movie is 60.1Mb in size.
Product Images
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Front of the Camera |
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Front of the Camera / Lens Extended |
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Isometric View |
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Isometric View |
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Rear of the Camera |
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Rear of the Camera / Image Displayed |
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Rear of the Camera / Turned On |
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Rear of the Camera / Mode Menu |
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Rear of the Camera / Main Menu |
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| Top of the Camera |
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| Bottom of the Camera |
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| Side of the Camera |
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| Side of the Camera |
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| Front of the Camera |
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| Front of the Camera |
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| Memory Card Slot |
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| Battery Compartment |
Conclusion
The Pentax Optio RZ18 is an appealing travel-zoom camera with a truly versatile 18x zoom lens, but it's unfortunately let down by average image quality, no-frills build quality and slow processing times.
The RZ18 takes a similar approach to previous Pentax compacts that we've reviewed, being an inexpensive point and shoot camera that won't turn heads either with its looks or specification, but which is crucially a cheaper alternative to more full-featured and better-looking rivals. As a pocket camera with a long zoom, lots of megapixels, a big screen and acceptable stills and movies, the RZ18 certainly fits the bill.
More demanding users will want to look elsewhere, though, as the Pentax RZ18 suffers under closer scrutiny. Still image quality is something of a let-down, particularly when shooting in anything less than perfect lighting conditions. The relatively slow ISO speed of 200 suffers from visible noise, smearing of fine detail and loss of colour saturation, with all three problems getting progressively worse as you work your way up the range to the true top speed of ISO 1600. Video isn't much better, limited to 720p with big file sizes and rather inexplicably no use of the optical zoom, which is after all the main reason for buying this camera.
Which leaves cost as the Pentax Optio RZ18's main saving grace. A full retail price of £199.99 / $299.95 is good value for such a compact camera with such a long lens, but sadly the above caveats mean that we can't recommend it more highly.
| Ratings (out of 5) | |
|---|---|
| Design | 3.5 |
| Features | 4 |
| Ease-of-use | 4 |
| Image quality | 3 |
| Value for money | 4.5 |
Review Roundup
Reviews of the Pentax Optio RZ18 from around the web.
reviews.cnet.co.uk »
Ignore the low-tech case, the clicky buttons and the slightly grainy back screen and focus instead on the great results you can get from this mid-priced superzoom. The Pentax Optio RZ18 really is much better than its build quality suggests, and keenly priced too.
Read the full review »
ephotozine.com »
The Pentax Optio RZ18 was announced in September 2011 and is available in a range of three colours including classic black, pearl white and metallic orange, available for £169.00.
Read the full review »
Specifications
| Type | |
|---|---|
| Camera Type | Digital zoom compact camera |
| Sensor | |
| Type | CCD |
| Size | 1/2.33’’ CCD |
| Total Pixels | approx. 16.56 megapixels |
| Still | 16M (4608x3456), 12M [1:1] (3456x3456), 12M [16:9] (4608x2592), 7M (3072x2304), 2M [16:9] (1920x1080), 640 (640x480) |
| Movie | Resolution: Compatibility AVI (Motion JPEG), with HD: 1280(1280 x 720), 640(640 x 480) 320(?320 x 240): approx. 30/15 ips. |
| Sensitivity | Auto ISO, manual (80 ? 6400 ISO) |
| Shake Reduction | CCD-shift Shake Reduction |
| Lens | |
| Focal Length | Focal Lenth: 4.5-81mm, equ. to 25-450mm in 35mm |
| Digital Zoom |
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| Construction | 12 elements in 11 groups (4 asphérical elements ) |
| Focusing System | |
| Type | TTL autofocus with contrast détention |
| Functions | Multi?AF 9 spots zones , AF Spot, mouvment detection. |
| Focus Range (automatic) | Focusing Options: Manual Focusing, infinite landscape, hyper focal Normal: |
| Screen | |
| Type | 3’’ LCD Colour screen, TFT, approx.460K points |
| Shutter | |
| Type |
Program controlled electronical shutter |
| Speed | 1/2000 - 1/4 sec. 4 sec at most. (Night Scene mode setting) |
| Exposure system | |
| Metering |
TTL Metering: Matrix Metering choice, centre weighted or spot |
| Exposure Modes | Auto Picture, Program, Portrait, Night Scene Portrait, Night Scene, Movie, Landscape, Blue Sky, Sunset, Flower, Sport, Pet, Digital SR, Natural Skin Tone, Kids, Fireworks, Frame composite, Party, Food, Candlelight, Text, Surf & Snow, Digital Wide, Digital Panorama, Green ? |
| Compensation | +/-2EV (1/3 EV steps) |
| Flash | |
| Type |
Integrated flash control in serie. Automatic shutter release in low light conditions. |
| Modes | Flash-on and Flash-off modes "Red-eye" reduction function |
| Effective Range |
Flash range Wide: approx. 0.2 ? 4.3m (ISO Auto) |
| Exposure Parameters | |
| Modes | Mode: Standard, self timer,burst shooting, high speed burst (L,M,H****), Remote control DRE: "Dynamic Range Enlargement", shades compensation: high lights |
| Face Recognition |
Face recognition AF&AE is available for all modes up to 32 faces, Smile Capture, Blink Detection, animal recognition |
| White Balance | Auto, Daylight, Shade, Tungsten, Fluorescent, Manual setting |
| Movie | |
| Recording | Sound : WAV (PCM), mono Movie “Shake reduction” ? stabilized video Duration : Depends on memory card capacity |
| Editing | Record as pictures, spilt movies. |
| Playback | |
| Digital Filter | B&W, Sepia, Toy camera, Retro, Colours, Extract colour, Colour Emphasis, High Contrast, Soft, Starburst, Brightness? |
| Options | Slideshow, Image Rotation, Small Face filter, Digital Filter, Frame composite, Movie Edit, Red-Eye compensation, Resize, Cropping, Image / Sound copy, Voice memo, Protect, DPOF, Face close-up playback, Startup image |
| Storage | |
| Internal | Approx. 96MB |
| External | Compatible with SD, SDHC, SDHC |
| Special Features | |
| Features |
Text size: Standard, large World clock: Date and hour print |
| Language |
English, French, German, Spanish, Portuguese, Italian, Dutch, Japanese, Danish, Swedish, Finnish, Polish, Czech, Hungarian, Turkish, Greek, Russian, Thai, Korean, Simplified Chinese, Traditional Chinese |
| Printing | |
| Format | Format d’image: JPEG (Exif 2.3), DCF 2.0, DPOF, PRINT Image Matching III Format de vidéo: AVI (Motion JPEG) Format Audio: WAV (PCM), mono |
| Interface | |
| Interface | USB2.0 (Hi-Speed), PC/AV terminal (NTSC/PAL, mono) |
| Power | |
| Source |
Rechargeable D?LI92 Lithium?ion battery Other: AC Adapter, optional |
| Performance | *recording capacity approx. 240 pictures*and 230 mins ** in vide mode. |
| Dimensions | |
| Height | 60 mm |
| Width | 108 mm |
| Depth | 34mm |
| Weight | 191 g (charged with battery) Approx. 170 g (naked body) |
| Compatibility | |
| PC | Windows XP SP3, (SP3), VistaTM and 7 |
| Mac | OS X 10.3.9 or above |
| Accessories | |
| Included Software | Software: (CD-ROM) S-SW121 |
| Kit Content | USB cable I-USB7, AV-IAVC7 video cable, rechargeable battery Li-ion D-DLI92, battery charger D-BC92, O-ST104 strap and software. |
| Optional | Optional AC adapter |
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