The Pentax Q7 ($499.99 direct) is the latest entry in Pentax's line of ultra-small mirrorless cameras. It shares the same body design as its predecessors, but its 12-megapixel BSI-CMOS image sensor is roughly 50 percent larger. The image quality is the best the Q series has delivered to date, and all existing lenses are fully compatible with the new, larger image sensor. The compact interchangeable market is extremely competitive, and despite the improvements that Pentax has made, the Q7 can't keep up with our Editors' Choice Samsung NX300. That camera delivers SLR-like performance and image quality in a compact body, and offers built-in Wi-Fi. But don't count the Q7 out—for the right type of photographer it's an intriguing camera. There are both modern autofocus and lo-fi manual focus toy lenses available, and those in love with super-telephoto shots will appreciate the ability to mount Pentax K lenses via an adapter.

Design and Features
The Q7 is tiny. It measures just 2.3 by 4 by 1.3 inches (HWD) and weighs in at 6.4 ounces, the same size and weight as the previous-generation Q10. The included zoom lens adds a bit of depth, about 2 inches to its depth when mounted, but it's small to the point where you can throw it into your messenger bag or purse without worry. The only mirrorless camera we've reviewed that comes close in size is the Nikon 1 J3 (2.4 by 4 by 1.1 inches, 4.1 ounces), but that svelte shooter is aimed squarely at casual photographers. The Q7 has some controls and features that will satisfy point-and-shooters and shutterbugs alike. Like the K-50 SLR, the Q7 can be custom ordered in any of 120 color combinations.

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Pentax has packed a good amount of physical controls into the Q7's body. The front of the camera features a dial with five settings. By default it changes the art filter that is applied to JPG images, but it can also be set to enable the manual focus peaking aid, alter the image aspect ratio, switch between manual and autofocus, and enable the in-camera neutral density filter. On top you'll find a mechanical release for the pop-up flash, the play and power buttons, as well as the shutter, a control dial, and a mode dial.

Rear controls are packed in to the right of the LCD—there's an exposure compensation button, a four-way control pad with a central OK button, an Info button to toggle what's shown on the rear display, and another button that loads the menu. The four-way navigation buttons each double as a dedicated shooting control—ISO, the self-timer and drive mode, white balance, and flash output control are right at your fingertips. There's also the Green button—its function changes based on what mode you're in or control you're adjusting, but its general purpose is to put things back to default settings once they've been changed. If you've dialed in +3 EV compensation, a quick press of the EV button and then the Green button will reset that to 0.

Pentax D-SLR shooters will feel right at home with the menu system. It's a familiar text-based menu, similar to pretty much every Pentax D-SLR I can remember shooting with, all the way back to the K10D. There are more functions available within than we have time to go into. Exploring them will give you the ability to customize camera functions, including the function of the front dial. One setting that I almost always enable in Pentax cameras is locking the area to the focus point—more often than not, I want what I'm focusing on to be what the camera meters its exposure off of.

The rear LCD is 3 inches in size and packs a 460k-dot resolution. It's not as sharp as the 920k-dot screen on the Sony Alpha NEX-5R, and it doesn't tilt, but it is quite bright. I had no problems using it on an extremely sunny day. It is sharp enough to review photos to confirm focus—just be aware that if you're shooting in Raw mode, the image that comes up for review after a shot is captured will appear very blurry. Don't worry, the camera just needs a little bit of time to process it. Going into playback mode after it's saved to the card will give you a real idea of how the image looks. It can be a bit disconcerting if you're not aware of this and you're shooting with one of the manual focus toy lenses.

The Q7 includes focus peaking, which highlights in-focus areas of an image in white when working in manual focus mode, but I found it a little bit harder to use than the peaking systems found in other cameras. Even when an image is completely out of focus, there is a shimmering effect across the frame. It's similar to the peaking highlights, and made it difficult to discern what was actually in focus. If you are using a manual focus lens it's a good idea to disable the Power Saving option in the menu; when enabled it automatically dims the screen after a couple seconds, which makes focusing even more difficult.

One of the drawbacks of the Q7's small image sensor is that, unless you're really close to your subject, it's tough to blur the background of images, even if you're shooting with a fast lens like the f/1.9 01 Standard Prime. One of the settings on the mode dial is BC—Blur Control. This special mode racks the attached lens through the full range of its focus distance before snapping an in-focus shot. It takes the out-of-focus data, blends it with the in-focus subject, and saves a JPG photo with a blurry background, as seen in the photo above. The only downside is the time that it takes to accomplish this—there's about a 2.8-second delay between pressing the shutter and taking the photo, and another 6 seconds for processing. It's a neat feature, but don't try and use it for action shots—and Raw shooters will have to live with JPG output when shooting in that mode.