Pentax WG-3 GPS Review

User Interface and Modes

The WG-3 features a standard Pentax interface inherited from the WG-2.  Generally speaking, the interface is very user-friendly; things such as the drive modes, focusing modes, flash modes, and shooting modes are very easy to access.  The interface also has a number of unique and handy features.

Shooting Photos

When shooting in live view or playing back, you have the option to display detailed shooting information (including histogram, image mode, and image quality), basic information (exposure info, file number/remaining photos, and battery level), a grid, or no information at all.

The many shooting modes are accessed by pressing the down button the 4-way controller.  This pulls up a menu of all the available shooting mode.

We recommend shooting in P mode, as this guarantees that the camera will shoot at maximum resolution, and it lets you adjust menu settings as you see fit.  Auto pict mode is a simiplifed P mode which greys out most menu options and chooses the scene mode which it thinks is appropriate.  When selecting one of the two night scene modes on the second page, the camera's maximum shutter speed is increased from 1/4s to 4s.  The hand-held high-scene mode on the first page actually does a very good job of ensuring decent image quality without a tripod, however, so give it a shot at night!

To shoot videos, you can either select a video mode from the above menu, or simply press the red button on the camera regardless of shooting mode.

To change the focus mode, one presses the right button on the 4-way pad.

When manual focusing is selected, the camera magnifies the image, and the up and down buttons on the 4-way controller can be used to adjust the focus.  Although the manual focusing scale goes all the way down to 1 centimeter, it takes very long for the focus to work its way to the bottom.  Therefore, we consider manual focusing with the WG-3 to be frustrating.

The left button controls the flash:

Finally, the up button controls the drive mode, and it can be used to quickly enable the self-timer and remote control.

The drive modes include single shot (the default) a 2-second and 10-second selft-timer, continuous shooting, low-resolution high-speed shooting, 3-second and instant remote control shooting, and auto bracketing (limited to 3 exposures).

These four menus make it very easy to quickly access key camera settings.

Playback Mode

The WG-3's playback mode allows you to quickly cycle through and even edit your photos.  At the highest level, you can pull up a calendar showing you when you took photos:

You can then zoom in to two different thumbnail views:

These views also make it very easy to delete multiple photos as needed.

When viewing individual files, as shown at the top of the page, you can enable and disable the display of a number of shooting parameters. On the WG-3 GPS, you can also recall the GPS, heading, and pressure information for each photo:

Pressing the OK button in playback mode pulls up the editing menu, which lets you perform basic image enhancements.  There is also a slideshow feature.

Pressure Sensor

The WG-3 GPS's pressure sensor is enabled through the fifth tab of the main settings menu.  You can enable the display of pressure or relative height.

When pressure display is enabled, the pressure is shown in live view and on the front screen:

When the relative height display is enabled, you also need to tell the camera whether or not it's underwater, and you set a baseline height for the camera.  The camera will then display the depth or elevation relative to that measurement.

GPS

Like the pressure sensor, the GPS module is enabled through the main menu.  From this screen you can also get the GPS module to update the camera's time, and start a GPS track log.

Record Menu

The main menu, which is accessed via the "menu" button on the camera, is not quite as intuitive as the quick-access menus for shooting mode, focusing, etc.  Everything is organized into three columns, with the leftmost one being dedicated to settings related to capturing photos.

The biggest nuisace is that settings such as exposure compensation and ISO are on the second page of the menu, which obviously takes a while to access.  The WG-3 would benefit from a shortcut screen with many of these settings.  There are many other settings such as IQ enhancer, dynamic range expansion, and AF mode which users may be interested in changing frequently.

Movie Menu

The movie mode menu is short and sweet; all the settings are placed on a single page:

Settings Menu

All other settings are placed in the third tab of the main menu, which is the settings menu.  This is also where you enable the camera's built-in alarm clock feature.

User Interface Verdict

Overall, the WG-3's user interface is intuitive and well thought-out.  Current Pentax users will feel very comfortable with it, as it does not differ much from that of other Pentax compacts.

A few settings are harder to get to than they should be, however.  One of these settings is certainly the exposure compensation, which is what lets you brighten or darken the exposure while shooting.  Other shooting parameters, such as sharpness and contrast, as also rather tedious to get to, and constant pagination through the menus will eventually get annoying.  Finally, the WG-3's manual focusing mode isn't brilliant.  The WG-3 would benefit from a quick-access status screen and a different way to access exposure compensation.