[kadajawi]

No. I don't want that.

I need a camera that works well for stills AND video. First and foremost it has to be a stills camera. It would be great if it adds stuff that is good for video, as long as it doesn't impact stills usage. i.e. don't add a grip on top like with some more serious video cameras.

The way I am seeing it... or envisioning it... lets say 5 years from now our stills cameras don't even have video options... or just meager ones...and as a result we can buy our 50 bazillion mp monster full frame camera for half the price of the competition. Dedicated tool for a dedicated job.

At the same time we can get another high end dedicated tool for another dedicated job (if you're into that kind of thing)...if you're not into serious video then just leave it be.

But having one camera body that tries to do everything is why some of them cost twice as much as everything else....I've already said it, but the jack of all trades master of none thing... I am not a fan of that.

That is not going to happen. No video feature will save next to nothing. It still has to have a sensor. It still has to have a sensor that is fast enough to read the image multiple times a second (say 30 times). There has to be a processor that is capable of processing it, and turning it into a video.

All these capabilities will be part of the hardware Pentax uses anyway, unless they get custom hardware that has those bits and pieces removed. But that will add to the cost.

The only reason why a camera without video functionality could be cheaper, would be that they simply can't charge as much for it. From a manufacturing standpoint it makes no sense.

Dedicated video cameras exist, and some are pretty good. They aren't good for stills though, and I need to do both. (Besides they cost a lot.)

I'll soon be assisting on a corporate video shoot. We'll be shooting with DSLRs, and besides doing video we'll also be taking photos. Having to own, and bring, and operate much more gear just because those functions are split up makes no sense.

It's like saying a vehicle is either supposed to carry cargo, or to carry people. If you want to carry cargo, buy a pickup (with only 1 seat). If you want to carry people, buy a car with 5 seats but no storage space. Now, there are some things you might want to transport, that do require a pickup truck. But most things most people want to transport will happily fit into an ordinary car... plus passengers. Making a car that fits people AND some groceries doesn't cost more than one that isn't able to transport the groceries. All the necessary things are already there!

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Last edited by kadajawi; 05-11-2016 at 12:39 PM.

[johnmflores]

No. I don't want that.

I need a camera that works well for stills AND video. First and foremost it has to be a stills camera. It would be great if it adds stuff that is good for video, as long as it doesn't impact stills usage. i.e. don't add a grip on top like with some more serious video cameras.

I just bought a Panasonic GX85 because it takes good stills and image-stabilized 4k video. If it pans out, I'll likely get a second for backup. For the same price as a K-1.

[surfar]

Yes John, on my radar too! So looking forward to some reports.In Oz, the price of the gx8 is down to quite reasonable as well.Its a brick with 4K but "only" 4 axis stabilised.However its weather sealed and has a superior viewfinder to GX85.Weight is pretty close.

[PiDicus Rex]

When mine gets here this week, I definitely will be doing some video with it!

Ninja connected test in 1080p too please

Iff the K-1 can do 1080p25 output, I'll consider it until my budget reaches the point on the coin jar marked "Aja Cion"

I'm hitting Yes on the poll, but ONLY because "Fix the damn Firmware" isn't an option on the poll, and a Pentax DLSR, or either of the MILC bodies, with decent firmware would kick ass right now, rather then waiting through another product cycle.

Next product cycle, any DSLR or MILC that doesn't do 4K, will be a sales failure.

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Last edited by PiDicus Rex; 05-16-2016 at 05:59 AM.

[Danas_Anis]

well I would be more interested in camera that would do both, decent stills and video. I do both and need both, but at the moment can have only one tool. For the past few months I worked with few different cameras, some dedicated video cams and few lumix GH4s and after those, when I look at my Pentax footage, I feel upset.
What I would like to see is Pentax to come up with camera like Samsung NX1, that one is a perfect balance for those who do both stills and video. Honestly, if Samsung didn't do stupid and leave the camera market once they got things right (seems to be bitter truth) my upgrade would have been NX1 and me leaving Pentax. Now I may go Sony road. I am very interested in Pentax K1, but Ricoh Pentax didn't do video right again and it's not a camera for me unfortunately. Although if Pentax revealed something about rumored k70 and if it would be good news for video makers and the cam would come out in couple months, I would love to remain a Pentaxian.

[surfar]

Apparently the NX1 is still available direct from Sammys website, the weather sealed lenses costallotta though.


The NX500 has no viewfinder or weather sealing but is 30% of the cost of a NX1,a GR8 little camera!

[Quartermaster James]

Ignorant query here: when people complain about Pentax having poor video because of a deficient codec, does that mean that improved video could be implemented via a firmware update?

[johnmflores]

Ignorant query here: when people complain about Pentax having poor video because of a deficient codec, does that mean that improved video could be implemented via a firmware update?

It's not that simple. The Panasonic LUMIX GX85 has:

1. 100Mbps 4K video
2. 5-axis image stabilization during video recording
3. No 25 minute recording limit
4. No overheating issues

All of the above have hardware implications.

[kadajawi]

It's not that simple. The Panasonic LUMIX GX85 has:

1. 100Mbps 4K video
2. 5-axis image stabilization during video recording
3. No 25 minute recording limit
4. No overheating issues

All of the above have hardware implications.

Not necessarily. The 4k certainly. Needs different processor, perhaps sensor too.

Video stabilisation is pure software, the hardware exists and works. I think I tried to shake the K-1 in live view and it looked good.

Recording limit is mostly software and tax reasons, probably. They need some software to split the files, and the camera would be taxed differently in some markets if recording length is too long.

Overheating is hardware of course, but I find Pentax to be quite decent.

[Danas_Anis]

Apparently the NX1 is still available direct from Sammys website, the weather sealed lenses costallotta though.


The NX500 has no viewfinder or weather sealing but is 30% of the cost of a NX1,a GR8 little camera!

Unfortunately NX1 never reached my country. In addition the silence from Samsung makes no confidence about future. If the one goes with NX1 means the one needs lenses for it. And that is a big investment and if Samsung is no more in camera business other than smartphone cams next upgrade would mean another system change. Too costly. Although for what I do samyang has lots of nice manual focus lenses.

Anyway, if Pentax gave more love for video mode it would be fantastic. K mount has so many cool lenses.
I think it is time for Ricoh Pentax to go with 4k capable processors because 2017 and no 4k will be like no sales camera. 4K is useful not only for video making but improves overall performance of the device.

[PiDicus Rex]

Ignorant query here: when people complain about Pentax having poor video because of a deficient codec, does that mean that improved video could be implemented via a firmware update?

Simple answer, Yes.
(Sorry John,. )

Staying with HD video, Pentax could improve the video very quickly, following suggestions that have been repeated here often
- Enable Sensor Shift in video on cameras made since the K-5 (K-01, K-30, K-50, K-S1, K-S2, K-3, K-3ii, K-1)
- Fix the HDMI output to be clean feed, at the framerate the user selects to record in - so if you're recording 1080p25, it outputs 1080p25 on the HDMI, and not 720p30.
- Up the datarate on the h.264 to 50mbits - this means Less processing, and is still under the minimum write speed to qualify as 'class10' for SD cards.
- Allow users to swap to the more professional Intra-Frame CoDec that's still hidden in the camera for the interval frame recording - Mjpeg is much easier to write, and much easier to edit - just do it at 80 to 100 mbits per second.
- Live view audio monitoring.

Four of the five items I've just listed rely on firmware that is already in the camera, and just rewriting it to enable pre-existing features that have been disabled in the current specs.

The points John makes about the GX85 features, are what really should be classed as the Minimum Specs for 2017.

[johnmflores]

Simple answer, Yes.
(Sorry John,. )

Staying with HD video, Pentax could improve the video very quickly, following suggestions that have been repeated here often
- Enable Sensor Shift in video on cameras made since the K-5 (K-01, K-30, K-50, K-S1, K-S2, K-3, K-3ii, K-1)
- Fix the HDMI output to be clean feed, at the framerate the user selects to record in - so if you're recording 1080p25, it outputs 1080p25 on the HDMI, and not 720p30.
- Up the datarate on the h.264 to 50mbits - this means Less processing, and is still under the minimum write speed to qualify as 'class10' for SD cards.
- Allow users to swap to the more professional Intra-Frame CoDec that's still hidden in the camera for the interval frame recording - Mjpeg is much easier to write, and much easier to edit - just do it at 80 to 100 mbits per second.
- Live view audio monitoring.

Four of the five items I've just listed rely on firmware that is already in the camera, and just rewriting it to enable pre-existing features that have been disabled in the current specs.

The points John makes about the GX85 features, are what really should be classed as the Minimum Specs for 2017.

LOL. At least you have a sense of humor about it!

But seriously, you have no idea of the power, processing, and heat implications of your above suggestions. Each of the items that you list will place additional stresses upon the components involved and there is no way to know if they can hold up. Someone should hack a K-3ii or K-1, enable all of those features and see how long before it breaks.

[kadajawi]

Simple answer, Yes.
(Sorry John,. )

Staying with HD video, Pentax could improve the video very quickly, following suggestions that have been repeated here often
- Enable Sensor Shift in video on cameras made since the K-5 (K-01, K-30, K-50, K-S1, K-S2, K-3, K-3ii, K-1)
- Fix the HDMI output to be clean feed, at the framerate the user selects to record in - so if you're recording 1080p25, it outputs 1080p25 on the HDMI, and not 720p30.
- Up the datarate on the h.264 to 50mbits - this means Less processing, and is still under the minimum write speed to qualify as 'class10' for SD cards.
- Allow users to swap to the more professional Intra-Frame CoDec that's still hidden in the camera for the interval frame recording - Mjpeg is much easier to write, and much easier to edit - just do it at 80 to 100 mbits per second.
- Live view audio monitoring.

Four of the five items I've just listed rely on firmware that is already in the camera, and just rewriting it to enable pre-existing features that have been disabled in the current specs.

The points John makes about the GX85 features, are what really should be classed as the Minimum Specs for 2017.

@john: I think we are somewhere in between.

Sensor shift works without heat issues on the K-5. Seriously, it's fine! And despite hours of heavy SR use, it works perfectly. Unless they changed the SR system, and it became much more fragile, I don't see an issue there. SR was removed as the processor used by Pentax gained electronic SR. If Pentax used a processor that didn't have electronic SR, maybe they would activate regular SR again.

Clean HDMI out may not be that trivial. It would be optimal, but there can be hardware limitations, like that 720p30 is hardwired, and you just can't change it in software.

Upping the bitrate would help, and may be done in software I guess, but there can be issues with an encoder that might not support these higher bitrates (hardware video decoders struggle when the bitrate of a video is too high!). There may be artifacts created by the higher bitrate. etc. A mild increase could be possible though, I don't think those 20-24 Mbit are the limit.

MJPEG... I personally think it is possible, but not because there is interval recording. That is very simple, they just take 4K sized photos, put them in sequence and put a wrapper around it so it's a MJPEG file. You may not be able to do that (easily) with actual video... unless they take 24 2K stills and put them in sequence. There may have been something in the older processors that took the raw video data (after processing), and out came a video file... such as h264... or in this case MJPEG. That part may have been removed, which would complicate matters. I have no insight on how it is actually done, and what the processor is capable of, but I wouldn't say that it must be possible. It might...

Audio monitoring? Isn't that already possible?

[PiDicus Rex]

Audio monitoring? Isn't that already possible?

I haven't seen any audio bar graphs on any of the Pentax's I've used.
Which, yes, also includes the possibility of them being there and me not having found them.

I think Mjpeg should actually be Easier to process then the h.264 - for starters, it's Intra and not Inter frame compression, so there's none of the Long-GOP and prediction math to worry about, only the Discrete Cosine Transform applied to each frame individually.
Frankly, I wouldn't be suprised if the FPGU's in most cameras could do Intra frame compression using Wavelet math instead of the DCT math.

HDMI may be hardware limited, but I doubt it. There's no good reason for the OEM supplier to make a chip that won't do all of the frame sizes and rates of a particular HDMI standard.
No, what I think the problem is, is that the HD signal is down converted for the live view, and it's that signal which is then fed to the HDMI chip, which locks to the incoming frame size and rate and outputs in the same format.
The Sensor's vision should be sent to the HDMI parallel to the processing that feeds the live-view LCD.

And yes, SR, just switch it back on.

[k5astro]

Lately I'm drifting toward doing more and more video. I get more satisfaction out of the end result. I just bought a Lumix LX100. The criteria was that it had to be a traveller with a viewfinder and better photo AND video quality than my iPhone 6. This seems to be a lot to ask from camera makers because its hard to beat the iPhone 6 video quality. Camera makers like Pentax MUST (IMO) make their cameras with video quality at least as good as the iPhone or they will suffer.