Home > Consumer Reviews > Pentax IQ Zoom 145 M Super Quartz Date 35mm Camera (wood grip)

I am absolutely thrilled with the quality of the photographs produced by this camera. The pictures are crystal clear and resemble photos taken with an SLR camera. The camera has all the features, including red eye reduction, panoramic, date imprint, several different flash modes, and a terrific 145 zoom. Despite all the special features and settings, it's very user friendly and uncomplicated to operate. I purchased it to replace a Minolta Freedom 140 (supposedly the top of the line camera in this class...but has been discontinued), and like it better than the Minolta because it's much simpler to operate. I don't think anyone would be disappointed with the purchase of this Pentax. It takes great black and whites, too.

My wife and I have tried to find a good point and shoot 35mm camera to replace our Konica Revio Z2 APS camera that took terrible pictures. We tried the Yashica Zoomate 140, and had ok results, but for the money, we thought we could do better. So we have tried this Pentax with 2 rolls of Fuji 400 film so far, and the pictures are superb! To get really high quality pictures, you need to use the focus-lock feature and read the manual thoroughly. Once you understand how the camera focuses, it's a snap to take amazing pictures. The color saturation is the best we've seen in any camera we've ever owned. This camera really shines in outdoor lighting, and the panorama mode takes sharp pictures. Even fully zoomed to 145mm, the pictures were crystal clear. We used the timer and a tripod and had amazing SLR-type results. For $..., this camera can't be beat. It is a little bigger than most compact cameras, but it's very sturdy. My experience with tiny cameras is that they take lousy pictures, so I was actually encouraged by this camera's more substantial size.