[kent]

Just Posted: Pentax K-30 full review: Digital Photography Review

[Adam]

About what you'd expect. PF will be posting a K-30 vs T4i vs D5100 review on Wednesday, and the general finding was the same: the K-30 is worse for video and had slower overall performance, but was the best choice for stills.

[JinDesu]

Hooray for still shooting!

[OrchidJulie]

Ditto that. If I wanted a video camera I would get one. No interest whatever in the video capabilities!

[mike.hiran]

It seems video is a feature that they emphasize too much... I don't think it should weigh as heavily in their scoring.

[saladin]

Personally, I'd rather save the money and not have video on my dslr's at all, or funnel the money into better stills functions. but then i have very little interest in videography or whatever it's called. and maybe the cost saving would be relatively small anyway? either way, video does not rate on my buy-or-not-buy scale at all.

[Le Ugim]

Remind me why it only got the Silver Award?
Because the K30 isn't good enough for... video! :face palm:
Seriously?

[Tonto]

Good review, it does make it very clear that the negatives are pretty much in the video department and recommend it enthusiastically for still shooters which is great!
They do have to compare spec for spec with other makes and when you consider the K01 has all the video features this lacks I think its fair enough.

[Class A]

Below is what I just posted to the respective thread at DPreview. Their review is not terrible by any stretch of the imagination and goes to some length to praise good points of the K-30. However, one cannot help but feel that they are not a 100% impartial.

Post to forum:

Thanks for the review which does a good job overall, but

1. I'm very surprised that the two-dials are neither listed as one of the "Pros", nor are mentioned anywhere in the "Conclusions" at all. Why the omission?
2. I do not agree with the downgrading of a still camera due to sub-par video support.
   

Downgrading a DSLR because it lacks in the video compartment (compared to competitors, that is) is like downgrading a phone because its camera is 3MP, rather than 8MP.

If taking pictures with my phone is all but secondary to me, I wouldn't want a review to be picky about the phone. Whether it is 3MP or 8MP, taking pictures with phones sucks anyhow.

Same with video. DSLR have the wrong form factor for video and they are a curious replacement for a proper video camera even in the best examples.

Please consider using separate "still" vs "video" ratings. Looking at the 78% of the K-30 makes one think the camera is lacking, whereas one could easily argue that it is over-specced for its class.

BTW, good writing style would suggest that it is "it is easy to recommend the Pentax K-30." instead of "it is very hard to not recommend the Pentax K-30."

Who would try to "not recommend the K-30" but then be forced to?

P.S.: Publishing JPG response curves as if they had anything to do with real dynamic range is silly (and you know it). It fools the beginner and amuses/annoys the ones in the know.

[jva59]

Personally, I'd rather save the money and not have video on my dslr's at all, or funnel the money into better stills functions. but then i have very little interest in videography or whatever it's called. and maybe the cost saving would be relatively small anyway? either way, video does not rate on my buy-or-not-buy scale at all.

I agree, and I wonder how much use is made of video (but I'm a pretty extreme case. I've had three cameras with video capacity and never tried it on any).

[Dachiko]

I'm very surprised that the two-dials are neither listed as one of the "Pros", nor are mentioned anywhere in the "Conclusions" at all. Why the omission?

Totally agree, Im surprised as well. Even more, if you compare k-30 against 650D, the k-30 with thery nice handling and two dials looses on ergonomics and handling!
It looks like in this age video mode are much more important than two dials to the DSLR

[Rondec]

It really is funny how hesitant they are to recommend a Pentax camera. "You'll have to decide for yourself if the K-30 is good enough to make you switch from another system but for existing Pentax shooters or new DSLR users focus on stills photography the Pentax K-30 is an excellent choice and easily earns itself our sliver award." Wording that Class A noted above. For some reason, they don't want to make too much out of a camera that really blows cameras like the D5100 and T14 out of the water at a similar price point.

[curlednoodles]

@ Adam, do you still think the K30 is a better camera than the original K5?

Im surprised to see no mention of focus peaking in the dpreview review. I would have thought theyd assess it, given the large variety of legacy lenses.

[deadwolfbones]

Very even-handed review, in my opinion, and a clear win for Pentax in terms of exposure (marketing exposure, not photographic), etc.

I also don't give a single solitary shit about video in my dSLRs, but it's officially "a thing" now, and reviewers are essentially required to take it into account. One alternative, as Class A says, is to have separate reviews of dSLRs for their stills and video capabilities, but most sites (even ones like DPR) don't have the resources (time, mostly) to do that properly. Instead we have these franken-reviews that try to do it all and therefore don't get it 100% right for any type of user.

Basically, it just means we need to read between the lines and only take away the points that matter to us. Don't worry about the overall score and just extract the relevant information.

[deadwolfbones]

@ Adam, do you still think the K30 is a better camera than the original K5?

Im surprised to see no mention of focus peaking in the dpreview review. I would have thought theyd assess it, given the large variety of legacy lenses.

I'll comment on this, since I wrote that review (not Adam), and the claim was mine:

Yes, I still think it's better than the K-5 (overall, all things considered, for the range of possible users, etc etc). And no, Class A, I don't want to reopen that argument.