Pentax A40

We’ve been eagerly awaiting the arrival of this camera since November, but a fire in the factory that assembled the batteries led to an unfortunate three month-delay. Thankfully, it’s here now and we’re pleased to say it was certainly worth the wait.

On looks alone, this camera impresses. It boasts an all-metal body available in matte black or silver, which enhances the feeling of strength and durability. The sleek body is garnished with shiny chrome controls and lens surround, giving it that added sense of style. The A40 is ergonomically appealing thanks to its smooth corners and small thumb grip detail, which comprises of a slight raised lip covered in six textured dots. Like the rest of the camera, the robust feel extends to the extremely secure connections cavity, which has a solid hinged sliding door.

The layout is pretty pleasing, too. A large zoom rocker sits at the top of the back panel. The lever has a good feel to it and is easy to operate smoothly and quickly. Directly beneath the zoom sits a large playback button followed by the D-pad. Here you’ll find the usual suspects in terms of macro, flash and self-timer, plus the addition of the Mode control, which enables you to access all the scene modes when shooting and all the creative modes when in Playback.

There are ten scene modes to choose from including a pet mode, which you can set according to whether you’re photographing a cat or a dog and even what colour it is. The portrait mode also offers separate options: natural skin tone, portrait and half-length portrait. To top off the amount of choice, there are even three decorative frames to choose from should you so wish – gimmicky we know, but they’ll certainly keep your kids amused.

In playback, there is a nice range of creative modes to help you get the best from your shots. This is ideal if the idea of separate image-editing in Photoshop does not appeal. Here you can choose to resize, crop, rotate, add colour filters, digital filters (soft focus, pencil sketch, etc) red-eye and frames.

At the bottom of the panel sits the main menu for general settings and adjustments, and alongside this is the ‘green’ button, which converts you immediately into easy shooting mode. This is a great option if you’re planning to use this as a family camera – perfect for getting the kids involved in photography.

Another clever feature is the Dynamic Range Adjuster. This works by equalising the shadows and highlights in order to recover details at either end of the spectrum. This can be applied in four ways – off, automatic, weak or strong. It does a sterling job of salvaging detail in the shadows, although it’s not so convincing when it comes to saving blown-out highlights. It’s still a great feature all the same and will certainly make your life easier in tricky lighting conditions.

The final string to the A40’s bow is the top image stabilisation package. The method offered with this model is based on a moving sensor to counteract the effects of camera shake. This does a really excellent job, producing pin-sharp images. We put it to the test at a concert and it did a sterling job.

As far as picture quality goes, the A40 is a decent performer. The lens produces a superb level of sharpness, which can be appreciated at the centre of the shot right through to the corners.

Barrel distortion is a slight problem, presenting itself at the widest angle and surprisingly telephoto too. This is only obvious at the extreme wide and extreme telephoto, so don’t let this put you off. Performance-wise, the telephoto and wide-angle capabilities are average and a little extra reach at either end of the spectrum wouldn’t go amiss.

Like most compacts of this calibre the noise levels are pretty average, with the A40 performing brilliantly up until ISO 200 and then giving in to grain at ISO 400 upwards. The camera comes with a tripod bush to enable you to keep the camera steady and eliminate noise should you wish.

We love the colour reproduction this camera manages. It produces vibrant hues, which are tonally in keeping with real life. Combine the excellent colours with the sharpness of the lens and you can really achieve some fantastic punchy images. Even when using the flash within close range of subject you will find a pleasing colour balance, which in most cases would have been drained of colour.

We really do champion this camera as a great family compact. It offers so much versatility in terms of user level. There’s the ‘green’ button to shoot in easy mode, which is perfect for the kids, plus you can dabble with the manual mode to get more creative with your shots. Children will love the optional frames and filters built-in to the camera menu and adults will enjoy the sophistication of the build and clarity of the images. This is a brilliant little camera that will find a lot of use from the whole family.