Originally posted by fredralphfred OK, I'm being a bit facetious in the last bit, but really -- video cameras and still cameras are two completely different beasts and always have been. They may converge a little more now that we've had a digital revolution, but getting a still camera to be a good video camera (and no, the Canon 5d mk. ii NEVER qualified) is really about as easy as modifying an old Pentax film camera to take motion pictures. People are complaining about the battery life on the K-3ii. What will they say when it gets a 4K capable processor? HD video takes plenty enough juice, and that's probably the reason Pentax isn't supporting it better right now -- if the processor can handle still pictures with judicious speed, upgrading it to handle video just eats battery life. And it's all software (firmware) nowadays -- there are no more dedicated ASIC processors, especially low power ones, for encoding. It's just too complicated, and the standards change too quickly. Besides, about the only camera company that makes lenses good enough for video (they have different requirements) is Canon. (Although apparently you can get an adapter to fit old TV studio camera lenses on the Pentax Q [and I have to specify now because there are about 3 or 4 different "q" cameras on the market at the moment]).
The built-in video mode is great for if you're somewhere with your still camera and want a casual video of something that's happening. It would be irritating to carry a camcorder for a "what if" like that, and yes, the gear you have is probably better than something small and dedicated (not to mention expensive). But everyone seems to want production video features on their still camera. Considering what they won't be able to do, regardless of Pentax's wishes (or more probably its users'), I have to wonder why.
TV shows are produced on the NX1. Philip Bloom's gorgeous documentary series for CNN was shot in parts on an A7S.
Ergonomics are a bit of an issue, I agree, but dedicated cameras are quite expensive, and there are enough people who want to/have to shoot stills AND video... and who may be happy to give up a bit of ergonomics for the convenience of only having to own and carry one camera.
The K-5 was already a good video camera, all it really lacked was manual controls. The quality was good IMHO, and I'll take it over many other cameras for video. It's not too difficult.
As for 4K capable processor... such a processor should generally be faster, meaning that even if it uses more power, it will use it for a shorter time. The power consumption per task (i.e. saving a raw photo) may not be so bad. And if you don't record 4K video, the power consumption for doing so shouldn't matter I believe.
The video encoder has to be in hardware. Encoding 1080p video in h264, even in baseline settings, in real time, requires some serious processing power. Think i5, i7. There's no way they can be doing that part in software, there has to be some hardware support for certain tasks at least, though from what I heard the K-3 (?) did fix some encoding errors through a firmware update. The rest I do think is software, and Pentax could improve it for video.
There are video users shooting their Canon etc. with old Pentax glass. It doesn't have to be high end, IMHO. There's an area between Hollywood and home videos that may not be able to afford all the expensive Hollywood gear. Working on a small budget. Or even ambitious home video people (probably more where I am).
Back to BSI sensor... they mostly help with high pixel densities, so for example, 28 MP sensors that otherwise are more like 20-24 MP sensors. If you do it with a 20 MP sensor, the benefits will be smaller.
Separate PDAF sensors (DSLRs) should be superior to on sensor PDAF sensors in terms of low light performance, because they are bigger, have optics to bundle more light, ... the on sensor sensors have to fight with all the pixels for space. On the other hand you can spread the on site sensors much more, have more in general, and they are on the same plane as the image sensor. No need to adjust...