Pentax's waterproof OptioWP digital camera
By Peter Rojas 
posted Jan 5th 2005 1:42AM
posted Jan 5th 2005 1:42AM
We'd more or less resigned ourselves to underwater cameras being bulky and clunky, but Pentax has just introduced OptioWP, a new ultraslim, waterproof five megapixel digital camera that's just 22mm thick and comes with a 3x optical zoom lens and a 2.0-inch LCD screen around the back. All the tiny little buttons on it look like they'd be a bitch to deal with underwater, but to ease your pain they've added a special "Green Mode" where you can have the camera automatically revert to all your default settings just by pressing the green button.
Being a diver I was pretty much alrleady reaching for my wallet but a closer look shows "shooting at a depth of up to 1.5m " Ok great if you snorkal I guess but otherwise compeltely uesless.
They shouldn't call these things waterproof, they should just call them "rain-resistant" or "splash-proof" for shooting pictures poolside. The Canon WPC housings for the Elph, S and A series on the other hand are waterproof down to 130' or so.