Pentax DSLRs

U

userage

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I'm not sure many of you know much about the Pentax cameras but I'll give some details on the camera and what i'm going to talk about.

The Pentax K5 is an excellent stills camera, but it hasn't been given much attention in the video department due to lack of manual control. To give people some quick stats about the camera, according to DxO, it is 0.5f stops better in low light than the 7D, it has 14.1 stops of DR, Image quality rated at 82 and has in built anti-shake. The camera records in 1080p at 25fps. It records to MJPEG (4:2:2) at a bitrate of up to 110mb/s.

I wrote an email to Pentax about them upgrading the firmware to allow for manual control and I got a reply from a product coordinator asking me for any further suggestions I have to the video mode. Now, I feel this is a good sign because they want to hear what we have to say, and we could potentially shape a very good video camera, not just the K5 but any coming Pentax cameras. I understand Canon has a pretty large share in the HDSLR market so many people would not be interested but those who are I am asking you to post any suggestions that you may have to make an excellent HDSLR. Pentax has a massive amount of glass that is usable with the K mount (I believe its something like 6000+ lenses).

So can somebody share some suggestions that would make an excellent HDSLR to you?

I've already gotten a few suggestions about the Codec and providing a battery grip which has XLR inputs among other things.

If anyone would like to support, sign this petition please http://www.ipetitions.com/petition/pentax-to-improve-video-mode/
 
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Not specific to K5, I have the K-01 which I picked up dirt cheap, and am reasonably impressed with the video quality, seems comparable to canon at worst. It does have full manual control, but only with auto aperture lenses. Please update the firmware for manual shutter and ISO when using manual lenses, not being able to seems absurd to me. And make SR work properly for video, it apparently does on the K5, but not on K-01, K30. If they could get it together I'd consider getting the K30 for stills as it would match the k-01 for video.
 
I had two Pentax MX SLRs in the film era and liked them very much - still have a good set of the manual K-mount lenses from that time and often use them now on my Canon DSLR for video; wish I could use them on a Pentax DSLR! I have a soft spot for these relatively small, weather resistant cameras with built-in SR. Have never owned the K-5 but the thing I liked most about it (on paper) was the high datarate mjpeg video format (not continued with the K-30), but for some reason there was no manual exposure control. An enthusiast video codec spoilt by a consumer exposure control - strange decision. If manual control could be implemented in firmware it might become a serious video choice; Pentax needs a unique selling point. But is there a problem using this avi codec in various NLEs I wonder? There are not enough people using these cameras for video to get a feel for it. How would you rate the rolling shutter effect? Also, some people have reported overheating issues when shooting video - because of the weather proofing? - what's your experience, userage? For a future Pentax, I'd like to see an articulated screen.
 
I am currently using PIC MJPEG and am having no problems at all between my programs. I'd say the rolling shutter is at least on par with Canons, SR does help a lot, as for overheating problems I have never had any, I don't shoot in very warm environments though.

If anyone is interested in what I emailed back.

Firmware updates to K-5/K-5 II;
Full video manual control, much like in the K-01. This would also be great if we could get manual control even with the old Pentax M lenses but I understand that can cause issues because the current K mount no longer uses a mechanical link to read the aperture settings on those lenses. Another thing is to be able to change ISO while recording, no other camera has this and it would be an excellent feature.
Video capture at 24/25/30fps, No one would take the camera seriously (video-wise) without these frame rates, due to Europe having 25fps as a standard and USA having 30fps.
Video recording button. Something like using the Fx or RAW button to start video recording or enter video mode.
Crop marks in video mode, which is basically an overlay of lines to show different aspect ratios, a bit like this: http://images.inosak.org/magiclantern.jpg
Allow an area to be always zoomed in to allow for better MF, much like this: http://cs6237.userapi.com/u16007354/...display1_2.jpg
User select-able bit rates for the MJPEG codec, it currently averages about 70-110mbs which is great for high quality videos! It would be nice if we could go to its max though for the absolute best quality we can get.
HDMI Out to monitor the footage not just playback

Future Video updates;
Hot Pixel removal for stills and video
More frame rates for lower res, such as 120fps+ in VGA mode
Pixel Binning technique to improve video quality (This would also improve iso noise in video mode, the only DSLR I know of that does this is the Canon 5D Mark III)
44.1 or 48khz audio recording
Headphone jack for actually monitoring the audio (The K-01 allows your control Audio gain but there is no way to actually monitor it)
Focus peaking during recording
A few users has shown that they do not like the digital SR in the K-01, and they prefer it without stabilization because of that.
Clean HDMI Out (So we can record footage externally)
Recording to ProRes or RAW(this is a far stretch, it would be an great thing to Cinematographers but we would not be upset or surprised if we did not get this as MJPEG is pretty good)
Waveform monitor
Click to expand...

Hopefully we will get at least manual control
 
Good luck - I hope you succeed! But I won't be waiting on the edge of my chair. I have shot Pentax all my life, and 2010 found me with a nice selection of legacy and AF Pentax lenses, a K10D, and a K-x that was my introduction to video on a DSLR. Throughout 2010 there were LOUD cries on DPreview, PentaxForums etc etc for manual freakin' control!!! When the next iteration of cameras (Kr, K5) were released without that, I and others I knew from those threads got totally fed up and jumped to the GH2 as soon as we could buy one.

I still have most of the lenses, and a faint lingering hope that the Pentax engineers may one day do the right thing ... but that hope fades with each passing year ...
 
At least they are slightly heading in the right direction. The K-01 and K-30 have decent manual control, just a shame about the crappy codec though.

I'll let you guys know of any response, I'm not sure how long it will take from a response from the factory but the product coordinator took less than a week to reply.
 
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