{"id":20310,"date":"2018-07-07T08:15:08","date_gmt":"2018-07-07T15:15:08","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/wkoopmans.ca\/notebook\/?p=20310"},"modified":"2018-07-07T08:15:08","modified_gmt":"2018-07-07T15:15:08","slug":"pentax-iqzoom-200","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/wkoopmans.ca\/notebook\/?p=20310","title":{"rendered":"Pentax IQzoom 200"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"PentaxIQ200-4381\"<\/a><\/span><\/span><\/span><\/span><\/span><\/p>\n

The Pentax IQZoom 200 thankfully marks the upper limits of the super zoom point and shoots and possibly the depths of how bad a lens can be.\u00a0 Everything else about the camera is run of the mill for the time but the lens is a 48-200mm f5.1 – f13 abomination with 11 elements.\u00a0 Coupled with a shutter only capable of a 1\/400 of a second minimum shutter speed your almost guaranteed to have blurry images.\u00a0 Thankfully that might hide some of the chromatic aberration which look like a 3D anaglyph they’re\u00a0 so bad.\u00a0 Even in good light with 400 ISO film at f13 it might only select a shutter speed of 1\/125 of a second which is far too slow for hand holding such a light 200mm lens without a lot of care.\u00a0 Its just an ill conceived idea and little wonder by the time digital cameras became mainstream people were ready for an alternative.\u00a0 And 48mm isn’t very wide which leaves the usefulness of the entire camera in question.\u00a0 Sure if your at the beach on a bright day and you want to take a fuzzy picture of a sandcastle in the distance this might be the camera for you.\u00a0 Having now run a roll of film through it the question is now what do I do with the camera.\u00a0 It does provide a couple nice features like multi exposure which you can see in the flag picture and spot focus.\u00a0 Even taking that into consideration I cant think of a situation where I’m going to think ‘Hey I should really grab that IQzoom 200 monstrosity’.<\/p>\n

One thing about one camera:\u00a0 The Pentax IQ Zoom 200 cost $349 US in 1999 which was enough money to get you an entry level SLR with a kit lens.\u00a0 At the same time saving you from the embarrassment of owning this camera.\u00a0<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\t\t