Pentax Optio E70: Snow joke, readers

By Rich Trenholm on 02 February 2009, 11:54am

Hey everybody -- it's snowing! But of course you knew that, because you're reading this in your fleecy Thundercats jammies, curled up in your warm and cosy home, instead of on your work computer, hoping your boss hasn't noticed. No staying at home for your intrepid Cravers, for whom no amount of frozen precipitation will stop us from forging into CNET Towers. The gadget news must get through! And so we bring you news of the Pentax Optio E70 budget compact camera.

On second thoughts, we should have stayed in bed and caught up on The Wire like everybody else. The E70 is a 10.1-megapixel point-and-shoot with a 3x optical zoom, and a 35mm equivalent focal length of 32–96mm.

It sports a 61mm (2.4-inch) screen on the back, along with the usual large and friendly buttons. Probably good for anybody wearing gloves. Face recognition will adjust for up to ten faces, while smile detection will take a picture when it detects a grin. Probably won't work on smiles made of chocolate buttons underneath a carrot nose, but never mind.

Right, that's enough. We're going to go back to gabbling about how the local common/park/our garden totally looks like Narnia. If you're facing a long and wintry journey home, console yourself with the knowledge that you could pick up the Optio E70 for a snowflake under £100. And remember, if you were 3-years-old, this would be the best day of your entire life.