Meet the new Pentax X70 superzoom

The Pentax camera mystery is officially over as Pentax speaks and officially reveals the Optio (?) X70, their first hyperzoom digital camera, and their first superzoom since the "blimps", the Optio MX hybrid camera/camcorder pairs.

As you can tell from the pictures, and the specs, the camera shares a common ancestry with the Nikon P90. Sadly, neither one offers RAW. We contrast some of the specs below, with the P90 in italics.

Also of note, it seems that Pentax is not using the "Optio" designation for this camera.

Pentax X70 main specifications
+ 12mp 1/2.33" sensor
+ 24X optical zoom lens (26-624mm eq)
+ sensor-shift image stabilization
+ popup flash
+ PASM (manual exposure)
+ 11fps (21 images, at 5MP)
+ shutter release lag: 0.031 sec
+ 15fps 720p video, 30fps 848x480 (wide VGA)
+ face detection stats (!): up to 32 faces, 0.03 seconds
+ 2.7" fixed LCD (230k) (P90: 3" vari-angle LCD)
+ LiIon y D-LI92 battery (170 CIPA) (P90: 200 CIPA)
+ price $400, available at Amazon

Battery beef
One very good reason to use a LiIon battery over rechargeable AAs is that you can provide more power to the camera than four rechargeable AAs could. However, when you see a camera with a rather low CIPA number like the X70 and P90, it makes you wonder, "what's the point?", especially now that Eneloops and friends are more readily available.

Further Reading
+ Photo.net discussion
+ Press release at Imaging Insider
+ OK 1000 Pentax blog
+ DC Resource
+ Pentax