Pentax K20D - I saw it, how it works

Matthew Bennett

Matthew Bennett

Well-known member
I went to my local camera shop and took at look at the K20D.

This is what you can do with it:

Create a 115 frame long, 21 fps string of fine quality, 1500x1000pix. JPEGS. If you play the sequential frames at 24p it comes to just under 5 sec. for a 'clip'.

This is what the camera does in it's "high speed burst mode" (which is quite buried in the menus by the way,)
You press and hold the shutter button. It first locks the mirror, disengaging use of the viewfinder, and then gives you a 'live view' type mode on the LCD. It will record for as long as you hold down the shutter release (up to the 5 sec of course). This operation is completely silent.
After the clip is taken, it takes about 20-25 SECONDS to write that Buffered sequence of JPEGS onto the memory card. You can't just record another clip right away.

So you'd shoot for 5 sec, record for 20-25 seconds, and on...

I tested a pan and it has the EXACT same level of wobble as the d90! So it's tripod for this sucker...

I'm going to rent their demo for a weekend and test this out eventually. Hopefully get a nice 300mm or something along with it.
 
Thanks, Matthew. Bummer about the wobble and time limit., because the video quality is really amazing. I've checked out some footage from the new micro four thirds cameras Panasonic is launching and I could not see any wobble there, even with strong camera shake. I also bet my bottom dollar that Red's DSLR won't suffer from this AND it will be reduced in size (as per some of Jannards' comments on the thread).
 
rawfa said:
Thanks, Matthew. Bummer about the wobble and time limit., because the video quality is really amazing. I've checked out some footage from the new micro four thirds cameras Panasonic is launching and I could not see any wobble there, even with strong camera shake.
Click to expand...

what video? G1 doesn't do video.
and if it does without wobble their "livemos" they call a mix of cmos and ccd must be more ccd than cmos. :D (the noise should give you a hint)
 
Even without the 5 sec limit I don't see how this could be any use at 21fps. If you play it back at 24fps, you'll get 14% speedup which is unacceptable. And converting the frame rate probably won't give satisfying results either.
 
rawfa said:
I never said the G1 does video. Check this http://www.dvxuser.com/V6/showthread.php?t=146814 , go to panasonic's website and then come back to us.
Click to expand...

you said

"I've checked out some footage from the new micro four thirds cameras Panasonic is launching and I could not see any wobble there, even with strong camera shake."

what exactly did you see without wobble?
anyway trust me. there is no cmos without wobble. no wobble = ccd. marketing trick to call it livemos.

and the back lcd of G1 (and pentax) is standard quality, not like d90/d300 and 50d. the viewfinder is really hard to use for video and only that tiny lcd is supposed to be good quality.
 
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I know what I said and there's still no place that says I'm referring exclusively to the G1. The G1 is just one of panasonics' micro four thirds cameras. Once again I must go back to "go to panasonic's website and check it out". They have 2 Hd videos that were shot on a different model that has yet to be released.
 
ando said:
you said

"I've checked out some footage from the new micro four thirds cameras Panasonic is launching and I could not see any wobble there, even with strong camera shake."

what exactly did you see without wobble?
anyway trust me. there is no cmos without wobble. no wobble = ccd. marketing trick to call it livemos.

and the back lcd of G1 (and pentax) is standard quality, not like d90/d300 and 50d. the viewfinder is really hard to use for video and only that tiny lcd is supposed to be good quality.
Click to expand...

What makes you think is CCD instead of a CMOS with Global shutter or some other fix?
 
ando said:
you said

"I've checked out some footage from the new micro four thirds cameras Panasonic is launching and I could not see any wobble there, even with strong camera shake."

what exactly did you see without wobble?
anyway trust me. there is no cmos without wobble. no wobble = ccd. marketing trick to call it livemos.

and the back lcd of G1 (and pentax) is standard quality, not like d90/d300 and 50d. the viewfinder is really hard to use for video and only that tiny lcd is supposed to be good quality.
Click to expand...

There is very little published on the "Live-MOS" sensor, but based off of what is, its not a CMOS sensor, meaning that its doesn't have complementary and symmetrical pairs of p-type and n-type metal oxide semiconder field effect transistors for logic functions. According to Imaging resource its an n-type MOSFET sensor.

In many ways, this "Live-MOS" is closer to a CCDs, with many CMOS-esque attributes (but its a AP MOS sensor). Again, there is little published about this sensor, I would be interested to know if the A/D converters etc are on the sensor like a modern CMOS (some of the recent slides of the Venus DSP indicate that it is).

As far as 'wobble', from the the sample movie of the micro-4/3 sensor linked in the other thread (the hand-held one with the two little girls with the bubbles); 'wobble' doesn't seem very noticeable at all judging from that small flash video. Personally I feel that there is a lot more potential with this micro-4/3rds cameras in terms of HD video that addresses the rolling-shutter skew of the larger CMOS dSLRs.

Edit:
Best link I can find on the subject:
http://www.dcviews.com/press/Olympus-Panasonic-MOS.htm

Upon further sleuthing the Live-MOS sensors seem to be related to the v(neu) Maicoimage sensors in Panny's cellphones and the 3MOS sensor in their recent SD100/S100 camcorders.
 
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