EI-200

Steve's Conclusion

In the past I have not been too terribly impressed with the other cameras I have reviewed that run under the Digita operating system. They all shared an annoying slowness at starting up and shot to shot times and a very slow refresh rate on the LCD. I'm happy to report that the EI-200 does not exhibit these problems and is very robust in all its operations.

One of the first things I noticed right off was the rather unique zooming flash lens. Many 35mm cameras have these zooming type of flash units but they are rare to nonexistent in the digicam world. As you zoom the lens in and out the flash follows along with it and widens or narrows it angle of coverage. This greatly improves the flash coverage at telephoto focal lengths because of the rapid drop-off of flash intensity as the distance from camera increases.

The only real disappointment was that the EI-200's CompactFlash Type II card slot would not handle the IBM Microdrive. Pentax's documentation clearly states that it is not compatible with the Microdrive but of course I had to try it and they were right, it does not "see" the drive at all. We now have CompactFlash Type II solid state cards with capacities almost as high as the 340MB Microdrive. The new SanDisk 300MB CF2 card for instance works flawlessly in the EI-200 as did every other size CF or CF2 card that I tried in it.

The EI-200 has a full compliment of exposure controls to suit the needs of beginning digi-photographers to the more advanced users. It functions as a completely automatic point-n-shoot with quick access to flash modes, selftimer/remote and focus options thanks to dedicated buttons on the top. The large monochrome data display lets you change these modes at a glance without turning on the color LCD. When you need the advanced camera options like shutter and aperture priority or spot metering you simply push the MENU button and scroll through the highly graphical Digita menus. The buttons below the color LCD are "soft" buttons, their functions change according to the menu screen being displayed. All in all it is a very complete set of user-selectable options that are easily accessed.

The 3x zoom lens is smooth and quiet. It exhibits the usual amount of barrel distortion at wideangle and slight pincushioning at full telephoto that we have become accustomed to in the consumer-priced digicams. All things considered it is a good to excellent lens capable of capturing sharp and detailed images all the way down to about four inches in macro mode. It has a builtin lens cap that closes when the camera is powered down and the lens is retracted. The maximum aperture is F2.4 so this is a fairly "fast" lens capable of capturing good images in poor to low-light conditions.

The build quality of the camera is excellent, it is heavier than other cameras the same size but this is not a bad thing. A good camera needs a certain amount of "heft" to it as the really light cameras are too easy to jiggle or move around when you're simply pressing the shutter button. When you're outdoors using a shutter speed of 1/250 or faster it's not a problem but indoors when shooting with slower shutter speeds and without the flash it is nearly impossible to get non-blurry pictures. Under these conditions it is always advisable to use a tripod but how often do we have one handy when we really need it?

All in all I was quite impressed with the EI-200. It's easy to operate and consistently cranks out good to excellent pictures. We had to wait a few years for Pentax to come out with another digital camera but it was well worth the wait. Pentax has an even more advanced SLR digicam called the EI-2000 that is due out in another month or so and this one should be even more impressive. In case you missed it at the beginning of the review, the Pentax EI-200 and the H-P PhotoSmart C618 are the same camera. Pentax and H-P worked together to produce this camera so if and when I review the PhotoSmart C618 it will simply be a carbon copy of this review.