Along with an advanced compact digital still camera, Pentax introduced yesterday a very slim standard DSC model, the eight megapixel Optio V10 ($249.95). Scheduled to hit the shelves this month, the unit is a scant .75-inch thick and sports a spacious three-inch, 230,000-pixel LCD with 170-degree viewing angle. Like its advanced brother, the A40, the V10 has digital shake reduction, which manipulates ISO to offset shuterbug jitters; a face recognition mode for automatically detecting and focusing on faces in a shot; and an auto picture mode that lets the camera suss out the best settings for a shot. Here are some of the camera's other features.

• A mode palette for quick access to the unit's 16 shooting and 13 playback modes.
• Video shake reduction mode.
• Auto tracking of moving subjects.
• Date imprinting of photos.
• Calendar display for retrieving images in the camera based on date.
• 52.1 megabytes of internal memory.
• In-camera red-eye correction.
• An auto macro mode for focusing as close as 3.9 inches to a subject.
• PictBridge, DPOF, EXIF, and Print Image Matching III support.