Originally posted by LaurenOE So I just rolled into Japan...decided to take along the K1 in addition to all the Sony stuff I am traveling with. It's a rainy and misty night...perfect for the K1 in downtown Tokyo. Pentax is always my goto field camera...but all I can get is 1080p/30 with a standard bit rate. Probably just order room service and catch up on some sleep.
If Ricoh would just understand that video is also part of a field camera load out I could leave so much of my Sony stuff home.
Just did a short in-home comparison of 5 cameras for video purposes.
2009 camera : Canon HG21 HD camcorder, 15mm² sensor, HD / 30fps at 24 Mbps , at its widest angle :
2012 camera : Pentax K-30, APS-C with DA 18-135WR at 18mm. 370mm² sensor, HD / 30 fps at 16 Mbps :
2016 camera : Panasonic DC-GX85 with 12-32 lens, around 15mm . 225mm² sensor, 4K / 30 fps at 100 Mbps :
2017 camera : Galaxy Note 8 smartphone, 24mm² sensor, 4K / 30, about 47 Mbps bit rate :
2018 model : Pentax K-1 II full frame with DA 28-105 at 28mm. 864mm² sensor, HD / 30 fps, about 22 Mbps bit rate :
Lighting conditions were the same. Cameras were on the same tripod, one at a time. Tripod was moved slightly between tests. Lenses all don't have the same field of view.
I mostly adjusted the focus in each case. Auto white balance for all cameras.
Picture-wise, the K-30 did the worst by a mile. Got the white balance all wrong, picture is soft, and the sound is also awful which doesn't help. This camera is why I have been complaining about Pentax video all those years.
Next is the Canon HG21 camcorder. Colors are good, but there is significant noise.
Next is the K-1 II . Video noise is very low. Colors are good, except for an anomaly in the sheet music showing some blue that shouldn't be there.
Next is the Galaxy Note 8 . Very sharp picture due to it being 4K. There is visible video noise on my 4K screen.
And finally, the winner is the Panasonic GX85 . Beautiful sharp picture, great colors, no video noise to speak of, which is really amazing considering the 4K video mode is a actually crop of the already-small micro 4/3 sensor. No doubt the 100 Mbps bit rate helps greatly.
Interestingly, the GX85 is the camera I paid the least for out of all the above. I got it for $500 with 2 lenses. My first Pentax K-30 was $800 with 1 lens. Canon HG21 camcorder was $1000. K-1 II with the 28-105 was $2400. The Note 8 was $900 .
Photo & video sure is an expensive hobby !
All my comments are based on looking at the files out of camera on my monitor, and not after compression by Youtube. If someone wants to look at them, I can upload them somewhere.
The only thing I did was to cut out the beginning / end parts with PowerDirector SVRT, which doesn't do any re-encoding. That feature doesn't work with smartphones files, however, due to variable video bit rate, so the file from the Note 8 was completely unedited .
Last edited by madbrain; 07-11-2018 at 11:09 PM.