I was quite impressed with the quality of the Pentax Optio W60. On the water, in the water or anywhere, it takes great pictures. Just went on vacation recently and everyone commented on the clarity and image quality.

I had this camera about 6 months and I still hate it. I mean it takes pictures and is better than a polaroid, but they should have tested this before they released it. I have to press the shoot button so hard I feel as though im gunna break it, and by then I already missed the shot. I end up with blurry pics. Once in awhile I will get a good shot. LIke 2 percent. The video, r u serious. The audio has this stupid clicking noise and all the audio is then a complete waste. I bought it to use for my website and I cant use any of the video. If you buy this camera you will be very dissapointed. The lens fogs up if I use it in the sun for longer than 10 minutes to top it off. Good luck!

I bought this camera for work. I've had it three weeks and have taken approximately 1000 photos / movies with it. I bought this particular camera because it was waterproof, shock resistant, and had the largest mechanical zoom (5x) I could find.

I have used the camera underwater in both fresh and sea water. Overall the camera takes good photos, though sometimes the color balance is off (particularly under backlit conditions). Also, the colors are sometimes flat underwater (green-blue in sea water, brown in fresh. Maybe it's just the water I was shooting in). There's no shake reduction, so photos can be blurry (there's some sort of post-shot blur reduction, but I haven't used it).

Photo quality is okay, but not spectacular. In my opinion, the camera has more megapixels than the lens warrants. I have no complaints, but if you want REALLY sharp photos, you probably want to look at something with a bigger/better lens. The close-up function, especially the 1cm macro setting, can take some amazing pictures. I got an 8gb card, which is big enough for my use.

I've used the camera in ares with extremely fine beach sand. None got in the camera (that I can tell), but some did get in the slide track for the battery / card cover, and had to be cleaned out (I could get it out with my finger nail). No troubles, but the slot did accumulate some and made the cover slide a little rough.

So far the shock resistance has been adequate. I missed a hand-off, and the camera got dropped from about 4 feet onto rough concrete with no noticeable damage.

I was a bit concerned that using the camera in fast-flowing water would cause the seals to leak, but no problems so far.

I like the menu system for different shooting modes. It uses both an icon and a short text description, which not only helps you remember what the icons mean, but helps you get the right one if you're shooting in the sun and the screen is hard to read. There are some of the modes I'll probably never use, but there aren't so many that it's annoying. I find the buttons big enough to use.

Batter life isn't great. If you're really using the camera (i.e., on most of the time), my experience is you get about half a day on the battery that comes with it. Larger capacity batteries are available. I've ordered one, but haven't picked it up yet.

Some little things -- the wrist strap didn't come with a cinch, something I found essential for not losing the camera in big waves or fast streams. The screen is difficult to see in bright sunlight (the same as other digital cameras I've used). The microphone isn't great quality (no surprise for such a small camera), and when you zoom during underwater movies, you can hear the click of the zoom button. Not a problem for me, but it might irritate some people. The manual says that to maintain waterproofness, you should replace the seals once a year, but it's not obvious where you get them or how to do it. I find the charger painful to pack; the cord and battery holder unit are essentially as big as the camera. Something that fit with the camera inside a small camera bag would have been nice. The way it is, you have to pack them separately. I have not used other underwater cameras, but I have found that if you use this one underwater and then above water, you can sometimes get a few drops of water stuck in the corner of the lens that blur your above-water shot.

Knowing what I know now, I would definitely buy this camera again.

Camera erratically fails to turn on. The only cure I have found is to remove the battery and put it back in. Then it will usually turn on but when it goes off again or is turned off it may or may not turn on thereafter. This is a little awkward to deal with while snorkeling. By carefully treading water and holding the camera up I can do it without getting the inside of the camera wet.

I bought this camera last year (in blue). I was looking for something small I could take with me on my kayaking and skiing trips. After doing a great flip and overturning in a kayak last year, I realized I will never relax unless my camera is waterproof. At the same time, I am used to the quality of my Nikon SLR and Nikkor lenses -- I wasn't willing to go for a waterproof camera that makes poor images.

I chose W60 based on its reviews after reading about all the other small waterproof cameras on the market. I don't have a lot of experience with non-SLR cameras, so my expectations were pretty low. Was I pleasantly surprised! This thing makes spectacular images in non-tricky light conditions. The pictures come out saturated and sharp. What really amazes me is that exposure errors are pretty rare. Most pictures look great and require very little processing. Even in low/tricky light W60 often steps up and surprises me. A non-trivial amount of images my W60 has produced go way beyond the "fun" camera range -- they are worthy of a photographic portfolio.

I find this camera very easy to use. Turns on very fast, controls are easy to navigate, even with my large fingers.

I've also taken the camera with me on a snorkeling trip. It held very well. I made some really fun pictures while swimming. Underwater results were not sharp, mostly because the water was choppy and I could not hold still. However, I would not expect anyone to use this camera for serious underwater photography. If you just want to capture some water fun in your photographs, and with pretty high quality in normal light -- W60 is for you.

I am giving W60 four stars mostly for one reason -- barrel distortion in certain circumstances is too annoying. If I could give 4.5 stars, I would.

The bottom line -- if you are looking for a camera to take with you into water, if you are looking for a second camera to complement your SLR, if you are looking for a regular small camera to always take pictures with -- W60 delivers if you don't expect art gallery-quality pictures to come out of it. I love this camera so much, a started carrying it around with me and using it actively when I am just out and about in NYC.