Originally posted by BigMackCam Well, we have different opinions on the subject, and that's cool. One thing's for sure - the K-1 is going to be a success if they've got the stills image quality people are hoping for, and I'll bet they have. Video enthusiasts will be disappointed, sure, but it's not worth getting frustrated about. You can't please everyone. Better they please the majority of their market - and that majority wants a capable FF Pentax DSLR for stills photography. Anything else is butter. Who knows, maybe in future Ricoh will go down the route you've mentioned and push further towards a stills-only offering - or maybe they'll improve the video capability. Either way, the K-1 is what it is.
Give the K-1 / firmware of the K-1 to a hand full of talented developers, and the camera would turn from being crap for video to something that filmmakers would actually buy. When I consider the K-5, launched 6 (!!!) years ago, to be better for video than their latest and greatest, which also costs more, then something went wrong. Something really went wrong.
They removed sensor shift based SR too, a feature that was working very, very well. Reason being that there are some very minor drawbacks to it. They might as well remove video capabilities, same thinking. Oh, and raw stills. Because they require more work processing, and they need more space on the memory card. So lets remove raw. (Would that be a stupid decision? Yes, of course. But not worse than removing sensor shift based SR, just that fewer people care). The camera is artificially limited because of this. It is artificially limited because of Movie SR, that even when deactivated hurts image quality just by being in the camera and available.
IMHO for casual use, buy a bloody camcorder. For professional use, DSLRs are where it's at, or better yet DSLMs. At the higher end there's of course good alternatives, but they are very expensive.
Casual users will want proper AF... nothing Pentax could offer. They want ease of use. etc. DSLRs are for those who want control over the look. They want to pull focus themselves or have an assistant for that. etc.
@IMP: They don't need to buy RED. They need to hire some Magic Lantern devs or ask a professional videographer (ideally a Hollywood DoP, cause that'd be good for marketing too!) on what a good camera has. Because the main impression Ricoh gives is that they have no idea whatsoever about what their video shooting (potential) customers want, what they are interested in. They need someone to tell them... "hey, Movie SR? Awful idea. Please activate proper SR again. And those bitrates? Any way to increase them? Could you try to create a LOG picture profile, and maybe also have a clean HDMI out?". Maybe not all of these things can be done, but I'm sure at least some things are trivial to implement, they just don't want to do it.
@ChristianRock: I'd take that K-r over a K-1 for video any day. It's probably better.
I don't really like the way Sony video looks, especially out of the camera. I don't like the way Olympus SR works, it works very well, but it doesn't look that nice to me. Plus their sensors are small. Canon hasn't improved video capabilities since the 550D, so that people go and buy their C300 etc. (which cost like 10x as much?). Nikon isn't too bad, but lack stabilization. Samsung is the same, just better for video, but with no future. Pentax however has a SR whose look I really like, Pentax creates beautiful, natural and even filmic looking videos right out of the camera. It's merely a few tweaks to make it perfect, while there are many things wrong with the competitors too.
Btw., the pro video stuff by Sony or Panasonic or Olympus are cameras like the Sony a6000 and a6300 (the a6000 being a cheap mirrorless stills camera), the Sony A7 series (great stills cameras), the Olympus OM-D series (which are great stills cameras), the Nikon D5300, ... Pro video stuff is really expensive and not that necessary. Canon C300 II for example, and those REDs etc.