6. Pentax Optio S12

Once again, Pentax makes stunning breakthroughs in the world of SLR cameras, but drags a little behind in compacts. If the design of this S12 isn’t revolutionary, the all-metal finish is nevertheless attractive and high in quality. It’s also one of the most compact models on our list.

The handling suffers from the small size a little, though, as those with large hands won’t be very comfortable here. It’s also too bad that the zoom got placed under the thumb, which makes it feel less stable. Browsing the menus, you’ll notice certain unusual scene modes, though overall, they are clear and easy to use.

Above all, our problem with the S12 is the lens, which only has a 37 to 111 mm range; forget the wide angle and the powerful zoom to content yourself with a 3x range. The barrel distortion is significant, and vignetting is present but limited.

The S12 does rather well in bright light, but visibly suffers as soon as you increase the ISO setting. The colorimetry also has issues, and tends to lean toward red. As for the video, it’s still at a resolution of 640x480, though it’s in DivX format, which makes image sharing practical.