Pentax Optio WG-1 GPS Full Review

Announced in February 2011 as the company's 12th generation of adventure series compact digital cameras, the WG-1 GPS is accompanied to market by a WG-1 variant that, not surprisingly, omits the GPS function that tracks and records positional data with captured images. While the former camera is the subject of our review, aside from GPS the features of both cameras are identical, so for the sake of brevity we'll just call our camera the WG-1 unless stated otherwise.


The big attraction of the WG-1 is the hardened design that makes it able to withstand conditions that would play havoc with a standard compact digital: waterproof to 33 feet of depth and dustproof as well; shockproof, able to withstand falls of up to 5 feet; coldproof down to 14 degrees Fahrenheit and featuring a crushproof construction that can withstand a weight force up to 220 pounds.
Once you get past that tough outer layer, what remains is a fairly typical compact: the WG-1 is available in black or purple, the WG-1 GPS in gray or green. Both cameras share the same hardware, a 14 megapixel sensor and 5x zoom lens covering the 28 to 140mm focal range in 35mm equivalents. Here's a look at those extremes.

28mm Wide Angle

140mm Telephoto
Beyond that there's a 2.7-inch LCD monitor, 720p HD video, digital shake reduction, face detection, smile capture and blink detection technology, and a nifty digital microscope feature that includes 5 LED lights arrayed around the lens to assist with lighting extreme close ups. The native ISO range is 80 to 1600, but 3200 and 6400 are available at greatly reduced resolution (4 and 5 MP). The camera uses SD/SDHC/SDXC memory media and there is an internal memory capacity of about 97 megabytes. Pentax includes USB and AV cables, a rechargeable Li-Ion battery and charger, camera strap, carabiner strap, macro stand and CD-ROM software with each camera.
The WG-1 is tough enough to go in harm's way, but what kind of images does it produce in the process? Let's find out.

BUILD AND DESIGNThe WG-1 is a bit more elongated than the typical compact digital, with a contoured body sculpted out of rubberized composite material with a bit of metal thrown in. The gray color scheme was attractive and overall the camera's materials and construction seem in keeping with the price point.

Ergonomics and ControlsThe first thing that jumps out at you with the WG-1 is there's no place for the thumb of the right hand on the camera back - where the LCD monitor leaves off, controls start up and the thumb has no place to go but over the controls. Even so, I didn't have any problems with inadvertent activations. The tripod socket is offset to the extreme right edge of the camera bottom and is made of composite material. The shutter button is likewise located fairly close to the right edge of the body, and I had to hold my index finger a bit away from the body in order to get the tip on the shutter.

Controls are simple and for the most part confined to the camera back - only the shutter and power switch can be found on the top of the body.
Menus and ModesThat simple control layout hints at things to come - menus are brief and quite intuitive, consisting of four pages of choices in a record menu and four pages in a setup menu. A two page "editing images" menu can be accessed when in playback mode to modify existing shots in the camera. Actual menu options will vary based shooting mode, with the single manual mode, Program Auto, offering the most user inputs to an otherwise largely automatic camera. Largely automatic, yes, but with the unusual feature of allowing user input for ISO sensitivity in many shooting modes.
Now that the cat's out of the bag on shooting modes, here they are:

• Auto: A fully auto mode that automatically selects the best capture mode from 15 camera shooting modes.
• Green mode: A pre-set automatic mode that is enabled by pressing the camera's green button - the camera defaults to these settings no matter what shooting mode or settings the user has established in record mode menus. 
• Scene modes: The WG-1 presents all shooting options, both still and video, in a single large menu accessed on the monitor via the mode portion of the four way controller - there is no scene "master menu" as such. Scene modes include night scene, underwater, digital microscope, landscape, flower, portrait, digital wide (stitches two pictures together), digital SR (expands ISO range to include 3200 and 6400 at greatly reduced resolution), surf & snow, kids, pet, sport, fireworks, candlelight, night scene portrait, text, food, digital panorama (stitches three captures together), frame composite (captures images with a frame) and report (captures images at fixed 180 x 960 pixels for reports).
• Program Auto: Automatic mode with camera setting shutter speed and aperture, but user has widest variety of input, including sharpening, contrast and saturation, white balance, ISO sensitivity and focus and exposure choices.
• Movie/Underwater Movie: Capture motion JPEG in 1280 x 720, 640 x 480 or 320 x 240 pixel resolution, all at either 15 or 30 frames per second. Clip length is limited to memory card or internal memory capacity, or 2GB. If memory card capacity permits, clips may recorded continuously in 2GB increments.

Display/Viewfinder
The WG-1's 2.7-inch LCD monitor has a 230,000 dot composition and is adjustable for 7 levels of brightness. The monitor measured a peak brightness of 397 nits with a contrast ratio of 536:1. That peak brightness is fairly low, the contrast ratio falls on the low end of the desirable range and the WG-1 monitor proved difficult to use in bright outdoor conditions.

Viewing for composition or capture was difficult if the monitor was anything less than pristinely clean - fingerprints or smudges really took a toll on performance in the bright outdoor Florida sun. Coverage is not specified but appears close to 100%.

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