Pentax Optio RS1000: Customizable with Removable Skins and Faceplates

Camera Review

Golden, CO—Pentax’s 14 megapixel Optio RS1000 digital camera can be cosmetically customized to match the personality and style of its owner, with a removable faceplate that holds interchangeable skins of any design.

Owners may skin the RS1000 to match a mood, an event or an outfit, for example. There are four ways to personalize the RS1000: dress it in a choice of 11 standard skins that ship with it; use the included SkinIt gift card to design and order a free, precut, 3M vinyl skin from skinit.com; use an included stencil to trace cutout lines onto printed photos, wrapping papers, drawings, and more to use as a skin; or download the Pentax Personal Skin Designer Adobe Air-based software from pentaximaging.com. The digital designer can be used to import a photo and save a skin as a PDF for printing on a color printer.

In addition to capturing 14MP still shots, the RS1000 offers high-definition 720p movie capture (1,280×720 pixels) and is equipped with a movie shake reduction mode to compensate for camera shake during movie shooting.

Other RS1000 features include: a 3.0-inch LCD; a 4x optical zoom lens that covers the equivalent focal lengths from 27.5mm wide angle to 110mm telephoto; auto-tracking autofocus (AF) mode to keep constant focus on a moving subject; auto picture mode for hands-off selection of the most appropriate of 15 shooting modes; automatic face detection for better people pictures; nine digital filters for added creativity; and digital panorama mode. Its handy frame composite function—with 20 frames stored in the camera—lets users shoot or compose images with decorative photo frames. $149.95. pentaximaging.com