Pentax Optio RS1000 review

Pentax Optio RS100: Customise your compact to suit your shooting style

The Optio RS1000 is one of Pentax’s latest compact cameras. Released alongside the new RZ10, which offers a 10x optical zoom, the RS1000 is boxier and basic in comparison. Nicknamed ‘Chameleon’ due to its unique customising twist, this budget compact will surprise you with its relatively good image quality and fun adjustable design.

Available to buy in two basic body colour options of black and white, the RS1000 features an unusual detachable clear plastic plate on the front of its body. Once removed you can place any image or design behind the perspex and personalise it to suit your own style and fashion. With downloadable chameleon templates available on the Pentax website, it’s easy to print and customise the camera.

At a perfectly proportioned size to suit small pockets, the RS1000 is incredibly lightweight at just 130 grams. With its affordability making it a good basic buy for first-time photographers, this camera is most likely to appeal to a younger generation who will appreciate and enjoy the added personalisation possibilities.

The camera features a good-sized 3-inch colour LCD screen for clear image playback, menu browsing and live view shooting, with a good-quality 4x optical and 6.7x digital zoom lens that responds well, gliding easily in and out of zoom when in use. The lens is also capable of getting up close to a subject from a fair distance with relatively low chromatic aberration present.

After taking it out on a test run, we found the RS1000 straightforward to use with trouble-free button and menu layouts. The camera powers up relatively quickly with fast focusing capabilities, and it offers various selectable shooting modes that include the intuitive smile detection and auto picture mode, the latter of which makes it easy to begin shooting straight away. All other optional scene modes are practical and can easily be selected and altered within the menu interface.

In-camera art filter effects are also available, making the RS1000 great for those without any kind of photo-editing software at home. However, these filter effects can only be applied to images that are already shot and saved, so you will not be able to preview the effect as you are shooting on the scene. But you can save the newly filtered image separately to the original, which is an added bonus. You’re also able to add more than just one filter to an image, enabling you to build a greater overall creative effect.

On review, JPEG images are of a good quality, proving to be relatively sharp in focus with fair colour, tone and contrast representation. Noise isn’t too much of a problem, but will become increasingly noticeable the higher the ISO, although it’s only really present from ISO 800 upward.

Boasting 14 megapixels, the camera offers high image resolution and 1280 x 720 HD video recording, which is impressive for a basic compact system. However, it is unfortunate that the RS1000 does not come with an easy-to-access record button on the body – you’ll have to navigate through the menu system to select and alternate between stills and video shooting.

Overall, this camera is a great compact companion at a basic level. With its more-than-affordable recommended retail price you will find that with a little research the Optio RS1000 can be purchased online for less than £100. For that price you can appreciate its fairly standard photographic qualities and enjoy its novelty adjustable design.