Pentax Optio 555

I spent some considerable time choosing my Pentax Optio 555 and I'm glad I did. I previously owned a Pentax Optio 33GS, which was a great camera but just didn't have the feature I wanted. The 555 boasts auto, shutter priority, aperture priority and manual modes. The image exposure in auto mode is very good but it's only when you get to grips with the other modes that the camera really shines! Having control over depth of field and exposure times are important to me and using these features is easy with the Optio 555. The image quality at the maximum 2592 x 1944 jpeg resolution produces fantastic prints up to A4. Even cropped and zoomed images are great at this print size. The recycle time for TIFFs is a bit slow but results are superb. However, no good for a rapid series of shots. You also won't be able to shoot TIFFs using the pathetic 16MB card - just too big - come on Pentax what are you thinking of? This is a brilliant camera which I would thoroughly recommend. I would suggest that buyers invest in some other accessories -

> A spare battery - the battery does go on for ever but so does charging - put a spare one in your bag (I didn't buy the Pentax - but a non-branded one for about a third of the price)

> A cheap tripod - I have a small telescopic Velbon

> The Pentax remote control - with this and the tripod you can shoot ridiculously long exposures and use the zoom at 20x without any camera shake. Also, as it works from over 5 metres it's great for wildlife photography.

> A 512Mb MMC or SD card - write to Pentax and tell them that their 16MB is useless - can't even take one TIFF with it.