Like my late Canon 1D Mark IIn the Pentax Q10 is one of the most unique interchangeable lens cameras in my collection; and in that respect it is an absolute polar opposite of the 1D.
Whereas the Canon 1D is massive, high speed and responsive the Pentax Q10 is sluggish but absolutely tiny. The Pentax Q series Mirrorless cameras are the smallest MILC ever made and they also have the smallest sensor ever put into an interchangeable lens camera which I will go into detail on later.
The fact that the camera is so small makes it unique by itself and as such its one of the cameras in my collection I won't sell off or trade. Shooting the Q10 is a mixed bag; I remembered what I loved about the camera and what I really hate about it. After shooting it for a week my urge to use it has been sated and it can go back onto my display shelf for another six months to a year when I want to challenge myself with this camera again.
Released in 2012, The Pentax Q10 was right in the middle of the first real wave of Mirrorless cameras, and it was outperformed by all of its competition including Micro 43rds camera as well as the up and coming Canon EOS-M, Sony NEX, Fujifilm X and Samsung NX seires APS-C mirrorless bodies.
Pentax of course wasn't aiming to make the best Mirrorless camera. They made the novelty of something small and fun for people to shoot that could go everywhere in fun color combinations to stick out from the crowd (though mine is fairly non-descript with its color combination). At one point you could custom order a Pentax Q of your own made to order in the colors you wanted to slap on it.
For a lot of these reasons. the Q series cameras still have a cult following to this day from the fact of how unique they are even if they are at times very frustrating to use.
The Q10 has a tiny 1/2.3" 12mp CMOS sensor. For this size of sensor however, it performs easily as well as a 1/1.7" class sensor (which the higher end q-s1 had).
As mentioned the camera itself is also absolutely tiny and while the Nikon J1 and several Micro 43rd bodies and Canon M cameras (such as the m100) were still very small the Q10 still edges them out slightly as being the smallest mirrorless camera ever made. Here's how this camera stacks up against the full sized Nikon D7000 DSLR by comparison to further gauge the scale of this tiny camera:
With the size and specifics of this camera out of the way let's start with what I don't like about the camera first, so then we can appreciate what I do like about it to wrap things up and lead into the actually pretty impressive example shots I took with it.
First and foremost the camera has a very noticeable shutter lag; a trait it shares with very early digicams and something that was rather unheard of in 2012. Meaning when you took a photo the rear LCD would black out and the shutter would fire, leaving you guessing when the shutter actually fired which leads to missing moments of objects in motion and in some cases added hand-shake for those who are used to chimping between shots.
Next the battery life is pretty meh. It gets roughly 100-200 shots per charged battery so plan accordingly and bring spares. This is a "in field" 100-200 shots not something like a camera review site that rates a camera for 350 shots and in the real world it gets 1,500 photos per battery (like the Panasonic G9- which I will get into soon...).
Burst mode is pretty much non-exsistant and the buffer is very small. It does help incredibly to shoot this camera in JPEG mode as a result, just like a lot of my bridge cameras, so that is what I did for this review.
The camera writes fairly meh RAW files containing only slightly more information over a JPEG file. It does however write them in .DNG which is a universal format useable by just about any editing software out of the box. Once I switched from the "always RAW" mentality and shot JPEG I found I really was not losing anything from this camera at all and actually gained quite a bit. Which leads me into what I like about this camera and makes me keep coming back to it time to time in spite of its many limitations.
The Pentax Q10 has a remarkably good sensor for its size and class. While it is a little soft out of the box, with just a touch of sharpening in POST even off of a JPEG file or using the in-camera processing options available and the photos from it really pop.
I played around with the front wheel and Color presets and with those engaged I found the photos Straight out of Camera to look quite pleasing without having to do any sort of Post Processing (especially with the Vibrant Color filter).
For a CMOS chip the contrast on the Pentax Q10 was very high and vibrant, getting close to that CCD feel like some of the older Canon CMOS chips such as you guessed it the Canon 1D Mark IIn. While that sensor was much sharper, both had a similar and unique high-contrast CMOS look which made them unique on their own.
So while the Pentax Q10 would be the absolute worst choice to have on a wildlife photo safari or at a sports game, it does a really solid job for taking photos of landscape, still life and even posed photography.
Don't expect to take photos of anything in motion and be happy with the results from this camera, but with a little bit of patience you can get some really nice vibrant and unique photos off of the Q10; which likely explains its cult following and reason I will still circle back to shoot this camera on occasion in spite of it not being a good choice for anything serious.
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