Ricoh has recently announced its new Pentax XG-1 which is a new entry-level superzoom camera which seems to be good at taking photos at a seriously high speed as well as taking well stabilized zoomed in shots.

The Pentax XG-1 is packed with the traditional ½.3-inch 16 megapixel BSI-CMOS sensor which features sensor-shift stabilization and the optics include a 52x (24-1248mm equivalent) lens with an aperture of f/2.8-5.6. It is capable of capturing full resolution photos at 9fps, 4 megapixel photos at 30fps and VGA quality photo at 60fps.

Now that was the good part about the camera, now the bad bits. The camera has a 3-inch 460k-dots LCD screen and an electronic viewfinder with just a 400k dots resolution. Further, the camera has a maximum ISO of just 3200, which basically is useless in the dark when you have no additional help with lighting.

“A macro mode on the camera allows it to focus as close as 0.4″ (1 cm) and an HDR mode combines three different images into one to capture a wider dynamic range.

“The camera also features multiple scene modes, capture modes, and 19 digital filters. It utilizes SD/SDHC memory cards and is compatible with Eye-Fi cards as well. The XG-1 blends the form of a DSLR with the function of a compact zoom camera.”

We are not saying it looks like an overall bad camera, as for an entry-level superzoom camera it does have a few neat features but that is just it. Also with such a high burst rate one can’t expect a good battery life from the camera.

The Pentax XG-1 from Ricoh is officially priced at $400, it is up for pre-order and it will hit the US stores sometime in mid-August.

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