Hey,
I've shot quit a bit of video on Canon DSLRs but this was my first short with a Pentax k-5. I wanted to use the k-5 this time as it's my own camera, I was curious to see what sort of quality I could tease out of the excellent sensor, and since the competition was specifically for DSLR video I wanted to differentiate myself from all the 550d/600d/60d/7d/5dii videos in the competition (and the nikons).
General observations:
The lack of manual control was an issue. I got round it generally by using exposure compensation and AE lock, sometimes before framing so I could get the settings how I wanted. A monitor would have been helpful, as sometimes I clipped the whites.
I found the noise was quite bad sometimes as I had no ISO control and couldn't even see what it was on screen. I was using some older M lenses with aperture control, so could have some influence on iso, but occasionally didn't notice the noise til afterwards.
I sometimes used the user mode "trick" for getting manual video, where you turn the dial to user mode, aperutre priority, get your settings, then ae lock and very quickly go to video, which keeps the settings and ae lock.
Shot without any digital filters in camera, and with tungsten white balance. Afterwards I toned down saturation to give it a filmy look and also to reduce the effect of colour noise.
The in-built shake reduction was used a little, otherwise on tripod. SR was great, looks very smooth - not true when I've used those lenses with an adapter on a canon DSLR.
I shot using a 50mm smc-M, 100mm smc-A, 16-45mm DA, and one or two shots on a 24mm smc-A. The user mode trick above doesn't work with the M lens, so was limited slightly by that.
Editing was done on premiere pro cs4, with a morgan codec to make the 60 to 80 kbps mjpeg files playable (hence the little smilie face in the corner! should spend the £20 on the full version!)
What do you think? I'm very keen to hear tips for future video outings with the k-5.