Design Art and Photography

Pentax has added an inexpensive 10.1-megapixel pocket camera to its line of point-and-shoots. The Optio E60 features an f/2.9-5.2, 32mm-96mm (35mm equivalent) 3X zoom lens and a 112,000-dot, 2.4-inch LCD.

Designed for automatic snapshot photography, the E60 provides numerous scene modes, face detection autoexposure and autofocus, an Auto Picture mode that evaluates scenes and automatically selects one of six shooting modes, and Pentax’s Green mode for fully automatic operation. Its automatic light sensitivity setting runs up to ISO 6400, and it has a 1/2000- to 4-second shutter speed range. The camera’s other notable features include a mode that alerts the photographer if someone blinks in a shot, a voice recording mode, smooth VGA video recording with sound, autofocus tracking, a panorama mode, and an Image Recovery function for retrieving accidentally deleted photos.

The E60 will be available in October 2008 for under $140.