When shooting flash photography, the Pentax Q is handicapped like any point-n-shoot, or even prosumer camera. The built-in flash works well for close-up portraits and macro work, but trying to illuminate even a small to mid-seized room, or a group of people is hard. The effective flash range is noted as a guide number of 7m at ISO 200. Boosting the ISO will help you indoors or at night, and thankfully the camera can use some of its higher sensitivity settings and still produce nice photos. While the flash can be srpung upward about an inch, this only helps reduce Red-eye in your people photos, and does not extend the range at all. If you're one who has to have more flash power, the Pentax Q does offer a P-TTL hot shoe for attaching an external flash unit. With its small frame, I bet if would a bit awkward to have a flash attached, but it's still a nice option to have. The sync speed is 1/250, and right now Petnax has several flash offerings: AF 540FGZ ($479.95), AF 360FGZ ($339.95), AF 200FG ($149.95). While the AF 540FGZ is the most versatile of the options, I feel the $150 AF 200FG would fit the Pentax Q the best, and still offers a nice flash range with a guide number of 28m at ISO 200; four times that of the built in flash. The only problem AF200FG is that there are no bounce or swivel features.

 

Video quality is typical for a digicam; decent, but nothing to get excited about. One thing that was extremely odd with the Q was when we first started testing the camera it would not record more than 1-2 seconds of video; period. It took a fresh format of my SanDisk Extreme Pro (UHS-1) 8GB SDHC card inside the camera to get it working properly. We're not exactly sure why the camera wouldn't record video properly before, but at least we fixed it. You can record video at full 1080p HD, 720p and VGA resolution, with a fixed frame rate of 30fps and stereo sound. We choose to use the FULL HD (1920x1080) option, and found that you can record pleasing video in a variety of settings. While these videos look fine when played back on your PC or HDTV (with optional HDMI cable), they still do not compare to the quality of a HD digital camcorder; however, they can't capture pictures like the Pentax Q either. 

 

Battery life was dismal at best. The camera uses a small D-LI68 1000mAh Li-ion battery pack, which is charged in the included AC charger; which uses a power cord, not fold-away prongs. They claim this pack can power the Q for up to 230 still images per charge. We saw about 200 photos before the battery was depleted, and had to charge the battery several times to complete our review. Now, it is very cold here in the midwest, and cold weather does effect these battery packs quite a bit. Either way, we were left wanting more when it came to power, so we highly recommend you pick up at least one extra pack to have with your at all times; about $35-50 online."