Pentax MX-1 Hands-on Preview

by Mike Tomkins
Posted 01/07/2013

Until now, there's been a clear differentiation in Pentax's camera lineup. Between its various mirrorless, SLR, and medium-format models, the company provides quite a few options for experienced shooters and those looking for room to grow. Its fixed-lens models, meanwhile, are aimed at consumers who want to keep things simple and affordable. With the debut of the Pentax MX-1, that line is blurred: Pentaxians can now aspire to a camera that fills the middle ground between simple compacts and feature-rich ILCs. The MX-1 should appeal both to photographers looking for a second camera to complement their SLR, and those in search of a step-up camera , but who don't want to deal with an interchangeable lens design.

If the name sounds familiar, that's no accident: it pays homage to the Pentax MX film camera line, dating from the late 1970s to the early 1980s. And while it might not have that much in common with the interchangeable-lens MX of days gone by, the Pentax MX-1 eschews modern styling trends in favor of a similarly clean, timeless aesthetic. Its vintage camera feeling will only be enhanced once a little of the paint wears away -- just as it did on the film cameras we knew and loved -- revealing a hint of the rugged, solid brass plates that line the MX-1's top and bottom decks.

And the enthusiast-friendly design extends beyond mere styling. On the front, there's a bright 4x zoom lens that looks very much the same as that shared by the Olympus XZ-1 and XZ-2 -- and here's hoping it is the same optic, because it's one we praised for its excellent corner-to-corner sharpness. There's also that hallmark of the enthusiast-class camera, a 1/1.7-inch image sensor, with a resolution of twelve megapixels. On the top deck sits a dedicated exposure compensation dial, a nice touch that will likewise appeal to Pentax's target customer. And of course, there are plenty of other features aimed at enthusiasts, including fully manual shooting, a DNG raw file format option, sensor-shift shake reduction, dual remote control receivers, and more.

Available from February 2013, the Pentax MX-1 also hits the same price point as many of its enthusiast-camera peers, listing at around US$500.

Walkaround. We were fortunate to spend some time with a pre-production version of the Pentax MX-1, and although the firmware and user interface weren't yet ready for evaluation, nonetheless found much to like. In hand, the Pentax MX-1's body feels very solid indeed, with not a hint of panel flex or creak, and a reassuring heft. Like its main rivals, it's not terribly compact; if you ignore the lens it's of similar size to many compact system cameras. Once you add the lens into the equation, there's a fair size advantage over most mirrorless models, though. That's achieved thanks to a sensor that, while it's larger than those in the majority of fixed-lens models, is a fair bit smaller than the Micro Four Thirds and APS-C sensors used by typical mirrorless cameras. Pentax has opted for a wider, shorter body than most of its peers, but the overall dimensions are similar. Loaded and ready to go, the Pentax MX-1 is also somewhat heavier than most rivals. Below is a comparison with the MX-1's nearest competitors:

From the front, the Pentax MX-1 is dominated by its bright lens, which looks a lot like that used in the Olympus XZ-1 and XZ-2 both physically, and in terms of its basic specifications. When fully retracted, the lens barrel protrudes about 0.6 inches (15mm) beyond the otherwise-flat front panel. Adding the squeeze-fit lens cap takes the lens depth up to about 0.8 inches (21mm). Powered on and zoomed to the telephoto position, the lens reaches its maximum length of about 1.8 inches (46mm).

Most of the MX-1's front deck is wrapped in a soft, tacky rubber imprinted with a leather-like texture. This is quite comfortable to the touch, and makes it easy to get good purchase on the camera body with your fingertips even though there's no protruding grip. A small cutout in the rubber trim beneath the MX-1 badge is home to a bright orange LED that doubles as both an autofocus assist lamp, and a self-timer indicator. Adjacent to this is a small window for an infrared remote control, compatible with the same remotes as used with Pentax's digital SLRs. A second receiver lives in the center of the thumb grip on the rear panel, a nice touch that means remotes will work from most angles, regardless of whether you're in front of the camera or behind it.

The only other details visible from this angle are the MX-1's shoulder strap lugs. They're located on bevels that span either end of the front panel, but are closer to being on the same plane as the front, than they are to the sides. That means the camera hangs with a slightly lens-up angle, even with the lens barrel fully extended. It's probably preferable to it hanging nose-down, though, and placing the lugs on those bevels helps them protrude a little less.

The Pentax MX-1's top and bottom decks harken back to cameras of days gone by. Each is capped with a single piece of brass that's concealed beneath a layer of paint. Over time, the paint will wear away, gifting the MX-1 with the same lovingly-used patina associated with classic film bodies.

At the leftmost end of the top panel is a popup flash strobe that's released with a small mechanical lever at the top of the camera's left-hand side. When raised, the flash stands proud about 0.4 inches (10mm) above the top deck. The mechanism is reassuringly smooth, and extends swiftly with no bounce. If you hold the camera with a two-handed grip, the flash does retract slightly beyond the closed position with the pressure of your fingertip, though. Another nice retro touch: the camera's model name, resolution, and a reminder of its brass construction are etched into the top of the strobe. To the right, behind the lens barrel, are two tiny holes that mark the left and right microphone ports, together providing stereo audio for videos shot with the MX-1.

The top deck controls are all clustered on the right hand end of the Pentax MX-1's body. The Mode dial isn't very tall, but it's easily gripped and has strong clicks at each detent, making it unlikely to be accidentally bumped. Next to this is the shutter button, encircled in a zoom rocker. It's easy to identify the half- and fully-pressed positions for the shutter button, thanks to a firm click at each. The strongly spring loaded zoom rocker offers only one zoom speed, and the protrusion that gives your finger purchase is quite sharply angled, so if you spend a lot of time zooming in and out it can get a bit uncomfortable

Nestled in between is a tiny dot that serves as the power button, illuminated in green when the camera is powered on. Its position between several deeper controls makes it unlikely to be accidentally bumped. Finally, at the very rightmost end is another tiny button that starts and stops movie recording, and a shallow dial that controls exposure compensation. Placing this as a separate physical control makes it clear the MX-1 is a camera aimed at enthusiasts, and it has even firmer detents, making it almost impossible to accidentally change your dialed-in setting.

Jumping to the rear of the Pentax MX-1, the three-inch LCD monitor is articulated on a double hinge, allowing it to tilt downwards by 45-degrees, and upwards as far as 90-degrees. This is handy for waist-level, low-to-the-ground, or over-the-head shooting, but unlike some designs it doesn't help when shooting self-portraits. All of the remaining controls are clustered to the right of the LCD. From top to bottom, these include an e-dial that makes settings changes and controls playback zoom, an aperture / AE-lock button, Pentax's familiar Green button that instantly returns to a default exposure (and which deletes images in Playback mode), plus the playback, info, and menu buttons. There's also a four-way arrow pad with central OK button, and the arrows double as drive mode, flash, macro, and ISO sensitivity controls in Record mode. All of these buttons are very small, but easily located by touch once you're familiar with the layout, and they all have firm clicks that make it easy to tell when they've been pressed.

On the right-hand side of the Pentax MX-1 body, there's a small hinged plastic door. Behind this are the camera's only connectivity options: a combined USB / standard-def compositive video output, and a Type-D HDMI high-def video output.

The opposite side is featureless, with the exception of the popup flash release slider we've already mentioned, and a tiny three-hole speaker grille near the camera's base.

Finally, the bottom of the Pentax MX-1 features a metal tripod socket, which is unfortunately both quite far from the central axis of the lens, and very close to the battery / flash card compartment door, making it impossible to access either while the camera is tripod-mounted. The locking, spring-loaded door has a small rubber cutout that permits access for a DC coupler, since there's no dedicated DC input on the camera body. Behind this door, the 1,250 mAh, 3.6V, 4.5Wh Pentax D-LI106 lithium ion rechargeable battery is held in place by a yellow, spring-loaded latch, and the battery itself is keyed so it can only be fully inserted with the correct orientation. The adjacent Secure Digital card slot accepts both SDHC and SDXC card types.

Given its pre-production status, we can't yet evaluate the MX-1's user interface or photographic capabilities. The physical design seems promising, though, with a very solid build, comfortable handling, and plenty of worthwhile features. The presence of a lens that seems at the very least closely related to the excellent optic from the Olympus XZ-2 gives reason for high hopes. We're very much looking forward to getting our hands on a final production sample of the Pentax MX-1 for testing and review.

Pentax MX-1 Technical Info

by Mike Tomkins

At the heart of the Pentax MX-1 is a 1/1.7-inch type, backside illuminated CMOS image sensor. That's the same size used by most enthusiast-friendly compacts, and much larger than those in consumer-oriented compacts. Effective resolution is 12.0 megapixels, from a sensor resolution of 12.76 megapixels.	Pentax hasn't branded the image processing engine in the MX-1, but says it includes its "latest Super Resolution technology". The MX-1 is manufacturer-rated for 4.21 frames-per-second burst shooting with a depth of ten shots. A lower-speed rate of 2.86 fps is also available, with the same burst depth.
The Pentax MX-1 offers an ISO sensitivity range of 100 to 12,800 equivalents, controlled automatically or manually. When under automatic control, you can also specify an upper limit between ISO 200 and 12,800 equivalents. Handheld Night Snap and Green modes have a fixed ISO 100 to 1,600 range.	The MX-1's 4x optical zoom lens looks a lot like that in the Olympus XZ-1 and XZ-2. It has 11 elements in eight groups, and a 35mm-equivalent focal length range of 28 to 112mm. Maximum aperture varies from f/1.8 at wide angle to f/2.5 at telephoto, and the minimum aperture is f/8. There's also a built-in ND filter, but we don't yet know its strength.
To combat blur from camera shake, Pentax has included a sensor shift SR image stabilization system, said to be capable of a three-stop correction. There are also software-based Pixel-Track SR and Movie SR functions. Like the vast majority of compacts, the MX-1 uses contrast-detect autofocus. The system has 25 user-selectable focus points, and includes a tracking function. There's also face detection, able to locate up to 32 faces within the image frame.
Both the top and bottom deck of the Pentax MX-1 are machined from a single piece of brass, just like classic cameras of days gone by.	The panels are painted black or silver, depending on the body color, and over time the paint will wear away, giving the camera's body an attractive patina.
Images and movies are framed on a three-inch LCD panel with an anti-reflective coating, and a high resolution of about 921,000 dots. That equates to an array of 640 x 480 pixels, with each pixel made up of separate red, green, and blue dots. The Pentax MX-1's display is articulated on a double-hinged, articulated arm. This tilts upwards 90 degrees, or downwards 45 degrees, and allows the display to be viewed from above or below the camera, but not from in front.
For those times when there's just not sufficient ambient light to get the shot handheld, Pentax has included a built-in flash. The MX-1's strobe has a range of 40 feet (12m) when using Auto ISO at wide angle. By the telephoto position, the range falls to around 29 feet (8.8m). Unlike most of the MX-1's enthusiast compact camera rivals, there is no external strobe, so there's no way to improve upon this maximum range unless you have an external flash that can be triggered when it detects another strobe firing.	The Pentax MX-1 offers all the Program, Aperture-priority (Av), Shutter-priority (Tv), and Manual modes you'd expect to find on a camera aimed at enthusiasts. The Program mode has a Flexible Program function, which makes it easy to bias the exposure to your preference without having to select a specific aperture or shutter speed. There's also a User mode to store one group of settings for quick recall, an HDR mode that maximizes dynamic range, a selection of user-friendly Green, Auto Picture, and Scene modes, and a Movie mode.
Exposures are determined using a multi-segment metering that operates on info from the image sensor. You can also opt for center-weighted or spot metering. Exposure compensation is available within a range of -2 to +2 EV, set in 1/3 EV steps. By default, the Pentax MX-1 offers a shutter speed range from 1/2,000 to 1/4 second. However, if you enable set the exposure mode to priority or manual, and opt to use electronic shutter, you get a greatly expanded range of 1/8,000 to 30 seconds. There's also a Bulb mode. Eleven white balance modes are available in the Pentax MX-1. There's a standard Auto, a Manual position, and nine presets: Daylight, Shade, Cloudy, Daylight Color Fluorescent, Daylight White Fluorescent, Cool White Fluorescent, Warm White Fluorescent, Tungsten, and Flash. To help combat tilted horizons and converging verticals, the Pentax MX-1 includes a dual-axis electronic level gauge. Of course, you can shoot movies with the MX-1. There's a dedicated movie mode, but you can also start recording using the movie record button from any other recording mode. You have a choice of two resolutions, both high definition. When shooting at 1080p (1,920 x 1,080 pixels, aka Full HD), the frame rate is fixed at 30 fps. For 720p (1,280 x 720 pixels), you have a choice of either 30 or 60 fps rates. There's also a high-speed movie mode that records VGA (640 x 480 pixel) video at 120 fps, for 30 fps playback at 1/4 of real time speed, plus a time-lapse movie function. Pentax has selected MPEG-4 AVC / H.264 compression, and audio is captured with a stereo microphone on the top deck. As noted previously, the MX-1 also includes Movie SR stabilization.
Connectivity options in the Pentax MX-1 include a combined USB 2.0 High Speed / standard-def audio/video port, and a high-def Type-D micro HDMI audio/video port. Both are concealed under a hinged, plastic door on the camera's right-hand side.
Images are recorded as JPEG compressed or DNG raw files. Data is stored in ~75MB of built-in memory, or on Secure Digital cards, including the higher-capacity SDHC and SDXC types. The Pentax MX-1 is said to be compatible with Eye-Fi's Wi-Fi capable Secure Digital cards, as well. Power comes courtesy of a proprietary D-Li106 lithium-ion rechargeable battery pack, included with a charger in the product bundle. Battery life is rated as 290 shots on a charge. An optional AC adapter kit will connect to the camera using a dummy battery connector, and a small rubber flap in the battery compartment door permits access for the dummy battery's power cord. The product bundle also includes Pentax's SILKYPIX Developer Studio 3.0 LE software, developed by Ichikawa Soft Laboratory.