Pentax K-01 Review

Drive Modes

The K-01 has 6 main drive modes: Single Frame, Continuous Hi, Continuous Lo, Self-Timer, Remote Control, and Bracketing. They can be accessed by pressing the right button on the 4-way controller when shooting.

The Single Frame mode is the default mode, which takes a single frame every time you press the shutter release button.  We've found it to be a little bit more sluggish than that of DSLRs, since the camera must re-focus in-between shots.  Therefore, we recommend shooting in continuous low by default, as in this mode, the camera responds a little faster and doesn't have to spend time re-focusing unless you let go of the shutter button.

In Continuous Lo mode, the camera shoots at 3FPS and has an unlimited buffer for JPEGs.  Depending on your card writing speed, the framerate may decrease slightly along the way until all data is written out.  If you're shooting in RAW, then the framerate falls to 1FPS, but the buffer size is still unlimited.

Continuous Hi mode lets you take about 6 frames at 6FPS.  Thereafter, the framerate falls to about the same as in Lo mode.  Once you stop shooting, the camera recovers very quickly and you'll be able to shoot at 6FPS even before all current photos have been written to the card.  In the continuous shooting mode, there as a very slight delay during which the camera is inoperable, but it generally does recover within half a second or so.  If you have instant review on, you will be able to see what you captured right away.  Thanks to the new PRIME M processor, this happens much faster than it did on the K-5.  Similarly, photos can be browsed much faster in play mode.

In Remote Control mode, the camera can be set to fire immediately or after a 3-second delay, and in Self-Timer mode, after a 12-second or 2-second delay.

Bracketing mode lets you shoot a series of photos with varying exposure settings.  The K-01 only supports bracketing 3 frames up to +- 3EV.  It would have been nice to see more options here, as things like these are strictly limited by software.  Extended bracketing is not available.

Continuous Shooting Demonstration

Below we demonstrate the K-01's shooting performance in continuous mode. For the most part, recovery is very quick, and the buffer is written to the SD card in a very timely manner, assuming you have a fast (> Class 6) SD card.

More continuous shooting demonstrations can be found on our homepage.

Our main complain about the K-01's continuous shooting is the low framerate in RAW, despite the unlimited buffer.  Also, why would Pentax flaunt a 6FPS shutter on paper if that framerate can't be sustained for more than a second or two?