[DantaxD-SK]

I bought a Pentax K-s2 at Hunts Photo in Melrose MA. A substantial influence on my not instead buying a K-3 or K5ii-s was the claim that the focus peaking issues were going to be solved in a firmware update. Firmware 1.0.2 is in and working.
The mirror still cycles for live view stills. The mirror still cycles when starting and stopping video.
And, to no surprise, The (white only) focus peaking still turns off the instant video recording is turned on.

I have heard from a forumite here that this is an insurmountable hardware issue. Specifically it is said that the video data stream is all made in one place and all altered in one place and then sent out a single bus towards the electronic equivalent of a Y pipe. One branch goes to the card. The other branch goes to the display.

I see several reasons to doubt this.The stream to the display needs heavy and specific processing anyway. It needs to be down converted in real time from more than one possible input resolution. More importantly it needs to have the non recorded overlay added. The attitude indicator has to change in real time and it gets displayed while recording. The histogram is complex and needs rapid updating, and it gets displayed during recording. Contrast alert is a vaguely related function to contrast detection that overlayed in red on screen during recording. And none of these turn up in the final recording.

So I have a hard time believing the whole "it's in hardware" story.

An external microphone plug is no indication intent for video use, especially in the absence of a monitoring port.
A firmware update to improve external mic level auto adjustment is a bit more convincing. To do so is to act on an expectation that an external mic will be used, ergo that the item will in fact see nontrivial video use. And the K3 and K-S1 have had a whole bunch of updates.
So Pentax may yet have intent to right this defect.

Does anyone have any inkling how long I must wait?

[panoguy]

First rule of good science: work with the results you get, not the results you want/expect.

Camera gear corollary: don't buy anything expecting it be improved in the future. It is what it is. You're setting yourself up for disappointment otherwise.

My recommendation, based on your issues and waiting: buy a Sony mirrorless body and PK adapter and enjoy no mirror cycles and interactive peaking in video recording (along with much better video AF, audio, and bitrates). At least you know those parts are already there in a Sony.

(Sorry to be blunt, but I think your angry contemplations need it)

[roberrl]

PK adapter which offers AF on a Sony body? ... I couldn't find one. I've gone down the route of a Sony body and it certainly has some advantages for video but I don't find it convenient to work with.

For most things I've gone back to a K-01, with all its problems it's the devil I know.

[Adam]

The K-3 doesn't cycle the mirror, but it likewise lacks focus peaking during video capture. Maybe we'll see it in the next flagship.

Adam
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[MPrince]

First rule of good science: work with the results you get, not the results you want/expect.

Camera gear corollary: don't buy anything expecting it be improved in the future. It is what it is. You're setting yourself up for disappointment otherwise.

My recommendation, based on your issues and waiting: buy a Sony mirrorless body and PK adapter and enjoy no mirror cycles and interactive peaking in video recording (along with much better video AF, audio, and bitrates). At least you know those parts are already there in a Sony.

(Sorry to be blunt, but I think your angry contemplations need it)

+1.

I don't see the logic in buying a cow and then getting upset because it's not a horse.

[DantaxD-SK]

I bought my K-s2 primarily for it's bang per unit buck in stills.
For video I am no worse off than with my previous camera.

I intended to buy a cow.
The cow could additionally function as a horse if it's firmware were written correctly.
I would like my machine to be both a horse and a cow.
And I cannot afford a good horse.

[kadajawi]

It could also be that the processor doesn't have enough power. Or the way things are wired up in the camera, i.e. the part that adds filters, contrast etc. is only able to do it once (and focus peaking is essentially a filter), after that it is split up for the part that drives the display (lower resolution, adds overlays) and the part that goes to the video encoder for storage to SD. It can be a hardware problem after all.

Camera gear corollary: don't buy anything expecting it be improved in the future. It is what it is. You're setting yourself up for disappointment otherwise.

That's only valid for Pentax. With a Samsung, Fuji, Olympus, ... you may very well expect significant improvements in future. Pentax... no. They rarely improve things, usually it's bug fixes and support for new lenses etc. The last actual improvements IIRC date back to the 2000s... they just don't do it. Give up.

Try the K-5. There the mirror doesn't cycle. No focus peaking either, but at least you get really high bitrates and stabilized video.

[stevebrot]

And the K3 and K-S1 have had a whole bunch of updates.

I do not view that as a positive thing.

That's only valid for Pentax. With a Samsung, Fuji, Olympus, ... you may very well expect significant improvements in future. Pentax... no. They rarely improve things, usually it's bug fixes and support for new lenses etc.

ROFL...firmware updates for feature roll-out is lame. It is an indication of time-to-market taking precedence over true development cycle. I will repeat that word...lame...


Steve

[kadajawi]

I do not view that as a positive thing.



ROFL...firmware updates for feature roll-out is lame. It is an indication of time-to-market taking precedence over true development cycle. I will repeat that word...lame...


Steve

If the camera is not usable, missing crucial features, yes (think current console games that are often unplayable when shipped, that crash all the time, lack levels and even sometimes the already promised multiplayer mode). Otherwise I completely disagree. There may be features that the manufacturer didn't think of, but that reviewers or users ask for. Is the user supposed to wait for the next generation of the camera, for a few years, and then buy a new camera? I'd rather have the manufacturer add the feature with a firmware update a few months down the road. The NX1 is for the most part far more feature complete than the K-3. And Samsung keeps adding new stuff.

[Rondec]

I do not view that as a positive thing.



ROFL...firmware updates for feature roll-out is lame. It is an indication of time-to-market taking precedence over true development cycle. I will repeat that word...lame...


Steve

I don't know that I would agree with that. There is nothing wrong with adding support for newer features after the fact, if it turns out to be desired by the folks using the camera. At the same time, from the brand stand point, if they give all of the functionality of new cameras to older cameras then they would sell fewer new cameras. I don't know how hard it would be, for example, to add focus peaking after the fact to the K5 and K5 II. Probably not too hard, but it doesn't benefit Pentax at all and so they don't do it.

But I certainly wouldn't buy a Pentax camera expecting that after the fact that they would suddenly add a better video codec or focus peaking in video mode. If it isn't there at time of release, it isn't likely coming.

[roberrl]

I think it boils down to the chip Pentax uses not having enough processing power to handle all the stuff that video users want such as higher frame rate or focus peaking. No amount of firmware update is going to fix that and remember the Pentax reps said "video is not a priority for us". I wish it were different, I really do, but I'm not holding my breath.

[kadajawi]

I think it boils down to the chip Pentax uses not having enough processing power to handle all the stuff that video users want such as higher frame rate or focus peaking. No amount of firmware update is going to fix that and remember the Pentax reps said "video is not a priority for us". I wish it were different, I really do, but I'm not holding my breath.

Yeah. But there are a couple of things the K-5 did, that subsequent cameras didn't.

The codec... newer Pentaxes use h264, which is a modern codec, rather than the K-5's MJPEG, which is really just lots of JPEG photos in a container. However the implementation Pentax uses is not particularly good, and too much aimed towards low file sizes rather than quality. An optional MJPEG mode would do a lot to improve video quality, and it should be lighter on the processor. Files would be huge, but so what. Sometimes you rather have good quality than small files/long recordings.

Shake reduction. Older Pentaxes had some pretty kick ass video stabilization, that was dropped after the K-5 and replaced with an electronic SR system that is so bad that Pentax should rather remove that completely (it also negatively affects the camera when deactivated). Pentax claims it's the noise the system makes... looking at the K-5 I can't agree, it is pretty much silent and unobtrusive. The more entry level ones are noisier... if that system is used in the K-3, ok, you'd hear it. But they have an external microphone input, which would stop the problem. They could have a bit of code that only lets you use SR when the microphone is plugged in, and if it isn't it could just mute the internal microphone and not record any sound. Or just live with it. Olympus now offers stabilized video. Sony does. Pentax had it a while back, now doesn't anymore.

And these two features should be doable via firmware, the existing hardware should have enough power to do those.

[LoneWolf]

I think it boils down to the chip Pentax uses not having enough processing power to handle all the stuff that video users want such as higher frame rate or focus peaking. No amount of firmware update is going to fix that and remember the Pentax reps said "video is not a priority for us". I wish it were different, I really do, but I'm not holding my breath.

There are also some other probable reasons:-

Numbers of staff working on firmware (new and upgrades) - there will inevitably be some some limit inflenced by cost and sales.

Availability of staff with sufficient knowledge of an item of firmware to add new features - experienced quality staff are more likely to be assigned to development for new models.

Complexity of change - without some anticipation a change which sounds simple to make can sometimes be horrendous to implement (and vice versa) - I know from many years of experience.

As previously noted, commercial reasons - upgrading software can have a negative impact on sales of new models.

Etc. Etc.

[DantaxD-SK]

Not enough processing power?
A smart designer trying to keep costs down in a machine wherein everything is done by one dated chip uses MJPG.
A smart designer trying to keep costs down while making a camera that only encodes in one very difficult format (say h.264) uses a converter ASIC and a cheap processor. Especially when using a single, compression ratio. Even more so when that ratio is high.
And is the processor truly THAT horrible to begin with?

The conspiracy theorist in me thinks the K-s2 may have been nerfed to improve sales of the K-3 ii and K-ff.

[Steve.Ledger]

K-50 mirror cycles when start/stopping video except when set to F4 on most lenses. Some other lenses it might be different. I suspect this matches an optimum for the camera computer - or something.
Try that with the K-S2.