[cdiersen]

Hi folks,

I got a Pentax Optio WG-II a couple of months ago, and it's a good camera for what it is. The photos it takes aren't as good as my Canon P&S images, but after years of hiking, climbing, and mountaineering, i have a drawer full of broken Canons, so it takes better photos than those! Ha!

Anyway, the thing is supposed to have an orientation sensor. If it does, it's either broken or not activated. Every image I take, no matter what position I hold the camera in (landscape, portrait, upside down) it records the image as having been taken in "landscape." I've verified this by checking the EXIF metadata on a number of photos that should have been recorded as "portrait."

I called Pentax support and spoke to someone who actually told me that the only way to change the orientation of a photo with this camera is to go into the playback menu and manually rotate the image. That's ridiculous. I've had 20 digital cameras in the last 20 years, and all of them record the camera's orientation.

I also submitted an online support form that seemed to send my message to some black hole in Japan, so I don't expect to hear back from them.

Is there some menu setting that I'm missing? Anyone else have this problem?

Thanks in advance for your help-

Chris

[cdiersen]

I've dug around a little bit more, and although web reviews of the WG-II specify that the camera has an orientation sensor, I can find no evidence of that being the case in the literature that came with the camera. Is it possible that (in this day and age!) there is no orientation sensor in this camera? Ha! That's ridiculous.

I see that the Pentax Q doesn't have one either...so weird. What an odd place to cut a corner...

[Matjazz]

I was surprised by the lack of orientation sensor as well but it doesn't bother me at all.