Pentax E50

A digital camera under £100 can set the alarm bells ringing in the head of a consumer. Putting such advanced technology at such a low price will most likely prompt the question “what’s the catch?” Pentax is looking to provide the impossible with the E50, combining excellent value with the kind of features only available on more expensive cameras.

Body shape and design at this level is rarely anything other than functional. The E50 does provide an amount of flair in places, with a rounded edge at the front and the occasional splash of shinier plastic. In spite of the price, the E50 certainly doesn’t feel as cheap as much of the opposition, boasting a body that stands up to a reasonable amount of punishment and doesn’t feel feather-light with a set of batteries in place. The buttons are similarly robust, with a level of tactility that makes every push feel all the more definite. From the D-pad through to the shutter release, each control has a very similar degree of depression, making operation refreshingly straightforward. The only possible negative to come from this is the zoom, which doesn’t have any graduation in speed. Due to the magnification being stepped, it doesn’t hinder the movement, but having such a rigid control method often makes zooming inaccurate.

The display doesn’t particularly help the process, with the zoom indicator bar at least a step behind the lens. This leads to an annoying repeated press of the zoom control when it has already reached its limit, simply because the display hasn’t kept pace. The screen in general is pretty poor, possessing too low a level of pixels to show any real detail in the images. The various menus are given a simplistic approach to stand out, though, especially in the case of the scene modes, which are portrayed in child-like symbols. The simplicity is punctuated by the full-auto Green Mode, which restricts all but the taking of images.

Image quality in general was a largely hit-and-miss affair. Noise was apparent in virtually every indoor image, and when outdoors, plenty of fringing could be found without having to look particularly hard. Even though both presented seemingly standard conditions for the shots in question, the exposure didn’t measure up particularly well in either instance. Strangely enough, the portrait shots weren’t too bad, showing a level of focus and the ability to temper the flash to cater to the subject. Where landscape and macro shots may be too much of a stretch, portraiture is seemingly more within the confines of the E50’s attributes. Being that the camera will mostly be used for snapping people, this isn’t a huge surprise, but it seems a shame that the versatility of subjects has been lost in the process.

There’s a certain level of dispensation that can be expected of cameras at the sub£100 level, being that they’re built to a cost to ensure the user gets the best possible feature set for the money. Pentax’s E50 is a real mixed bag, with build quality that belies the price, but patchy image quality that shows the budget beginnings all too clearly.