[Doundounba]

Well, the K-S1 manual has been put online (I found it here) and... I can't find any mention of either interval shooting or multi-exposure, two features which are present on my K-01 bodies... Can anyone confirm the absence of these features? Quite a bummer for me if that's indeed the case...

[jimr-pdx]

Ricoh-imaging.jp site shows both are there, plus interval movies. It seems like your K-1 mark II is in play here
I just changed my order to gold, what the heck.

Edit - hmm that's interesting, those are missing now. I share your concern

[Doundounba]

If you look at the K-S1 report on the front page, there's a video where they scroll through the menus of a K-S1 on the show floor at Photokina, and you don't see Interval Shooting or Multi-Exposure in the options there. That's a pre-release firmware, as far as I know, so it might not be indicative, but since it's not in the manual either... I've not used interval shooting yet, but I have used multi-exposure many times "in lieu" of an ND filter, and it's a very useful feature. I've also admired other's work in shooting timelapse, including with the K-01, and have been thinking about trying it myself. I thought Ricoh wasn't pitching the K-S1 as entry-level camera? Removing features that are in previous generation models - even the K-500 has interval and multi-exposure, right? - definitely would make the K-S1 seem pretty entry level. We'll know for sure once it ships, I guess...

EDIT: It occurs to me that in the K-3 these options may have moved, I think, away from the general camera menu and into the "drive-mode" settings (where you choose between single, continuous high, continuous low, and so on). In the PF video I linked to, that button is not hit. So maybe there's still hope.

EDIT #2: If you look at the Pentax Web Store's page for the K-S1, under specifications, it is listed under "Drive modes":

Multi-exposure: 2-9 shots, auto exposure adjustment
Interval: 999 shots, 3 sec to 24 hr interval, time delay

I'm just not too confident of that as an authoritative source...

[jimr-pdx]

Yes, I'm thinking that FW1.0 is being sent to warehouses as we speak if 0.30 was on display at Photokina! Each time I seek more data things have mutated. I accept the flash is a pinch weaker for the smaller body, but otherwise too many updated features to honestly accept that some of Pentax' distinctive items are gone. I never used the custom settings enough to miss them, but that's one other that might have been removed since the new mode dial has no Custom or USER mode. Easy to change menus, but adding a dial setting could be a challenge...

Re your edit2.. that's the page that shows 14bit raw near the top but 12bit in a later spot. I agree, not a page to trust!

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Last edited by jimr-pdx; 09-25-2014 at 11:14 AM.

[jimr-pdx]

I notice on at least one K-3 specs page that interval movies are not listed; multi-exposure and interval stills are listed under drive modes so this potential oversight isn't the same.

[kp0c]

Just to be clear, multi exposure is the same thing as bracketing?

[Doundounba]

No, it's a feature that blends multiple exposures into a single shot, but without changing settings. On cameras other than the K-3, this is usually the ability to combine up to 9 different shots, and you need to fire each shot yourself. In the K-3, you can combine up to 2,000 shots (!!) and fire them on a timer. The K-3 also has more methods for combining the shots. There's a good write-up of the K-3's multi-exposure capabilities right here. You typically use this to simulate the use of an ND filter or to reduce noise on high iso shots of static subjects, but there are also many artistic possibilities. I was curious as to whether or not the improved multi-exposure capabilities of the K-3 are also in the K-S1, and that's why I downloaded the manual and... found no reference to any mutli-exposure capabilities whatsoever.

Here's an example, 9-shot multi-exposure I did with my K-01. Each shot was 2.5 seconds, and I waited about 2 seconds between each shot, so the exposure was done over a roughly 45 second period. On a tripod, of course.

[Doundounba]

Well, Adam has put up the spec page for the K-S1 and that also has no mention of interval shooting or multi-exposure. Interval movie is there though, in the video section, but I'm guessing this give you no stills and just outputs a movie file. At this point I'd be surprised if those features were there. I wonder how that decision was taken during product development...

[Doundounba]

I held a K-S1 in my hands at a local dealer today, and I can confirm that there is no trace of Interval Shooting or Multi-Exposure that I could find in either the camera menus or the drive mode options. It's quite beyond me why Ricoh wouldn't even put in this camera capabilities similar to what was present in the K-01, the K-30, the K-50 and the K-500. This likely rules out the K-S1 as my next body.

[monochrome]

I held a K-S1 in my hands at a local dealer today, and I can confirm that there is no trace of Interval Shooting or Multi-Exposure that I could find in either the camera menus or the drive mode options. It's quite beyond me why Ricoh wouldn't even put in this camera capabilities similar to what was present in the K-01, the K-30, the K-50 and the K-500. This likely rules out the K-S1 as my next body.

Maybe those features will be available in the K-50 replacement (don't forget a K-30 / K-50 is a K-01 with a mirror and viewfinder and a slightly newer image processor).

[Doundounba]

Maybe those features will be available in the K-50 replacement (don't forget a K-30 / K-50 is a K-01 with a mirror and viewfinder and a slightly newer image processor).

Well, I'd like my next body to be at least a moderate upgrade, so I'd rather not buy a K-30/50. But yeah, when it arrives, the K-50 successor might work... or the K-3. What I have gained though, is a bit of empathy for people that didn't come into Pentax with the K-01 (as I did) and looked at something like its 1 FPS raw shooting and just thought "But why?!" Why deliberately cripple some features? The firmware code already has the capabilities for multi-exposure and interval shooting, in two versions - those of the K-3 and those of everything before. And in some product development meeting, some manager must have actively decided to have none of that on the K-S1. Granted, those are fairly advanced features, but I thought the K-S1 was not an entry-level DSLR? It certainly isn't priced as an entry-level body...

[EarlVonTapia]

So is there an answer to this question? Built-in interval shooting is amazing. It would be absurd for something like the original Q to have interval shooting, but the K-S1 to not have it.

Not that I'm thinking of getting one right now, but since it shares the same battery as the K30, if something did happen to my K30 I would have a logical upgrade choice down the road.

[Doundounba]

Neither Interval Shooting nor Multi-Exposure are in the manual, and neither are anywhere in the camera menus, as far as I can tell. That being said, I only checked while inspecting a K-S1 at a camera store, I don't actually own one. I also didn't check which firmware version the camera was running. But I did go in there looking specifically to answer this question, since no one else was fielding it. It might still be possible that there is some toggle option to "unhide" these features in the (C)onfiguration menus, or that they may be added in a future firmware update, but right now the safe bet is that they are not there and will never be.

It's hard to explain this absence as an oversight or an error, as those capabilities have been in pretty much every Pentax body for a pretty long time - so they were a standard part of the cameras & manuals. At some point during product development, someone (a firmware developer, a manual writer) had to ask the question of whether Multi-Exposure (for instance) would work like on the K-3 or like it worked on the K-50, since those two models differ significantly in the way that feature is implemented, and where it is in the camera's menus. And some manager had to decide that the K-S1 would have none of that, possibly in the name of making the Drive Mode menu simpler...