Pentax K7
 

There should be an official announcement about this camera Wednesday or Thursday. Here's the video-related specs I could dig up from rumor sites:

Shoots only in 30p, unfortunately.

Available resolutions:
1280 x 720
640 x 416
1536 x 1024 - Odd, but interesting. This matches the sensor's 3:2 aspect ratio. If as a result it yields better binning & less aliasing, great idea.

HDMI out, but supposedly it can't output during recording.

Built-in mono microphone, and there appears to be a microphone jack in the pictures

Other details:
APS-C size sensor (14.6 MP)
(It's CMOS, so expect at least some rolling shutter)
920K VGA LCD
ISO 100-3200
Weatherproof body!
Built-in HDR
Auto distortion and CA correction

Looks interesting!

Also: looks like you can at least control your aperture in movie mode:

http://www.pentax-fans.com/blog/wp-c...1_1024_pfc.jpg

Thanks for the info Joe. Looks like Canon use the same aperture control firmware for the 500D, but with the "Banned" setting permanently selected! :)

Richard

Now officially launched Pentax K-7 digital SLR announced and previewed: Digital Photography Review

Dan

Anyone know what video codec Pentax is using? M-JPEG, AVCHD, or something else?

I'm curious to see how this would stack up to the Lumix GH-1. I"ve got a bunch of old K-mount lenses I'd love to re-use.

Manufacturers website/product webpage:

http://www.pentaximaging.com/slr/K-7

According to the DPReview preview article, the codec is Motion JPEG. No mention of the bitrate.
They also mention HDMI under playback options, but nothing about it being live while shooting for monitoring or external recording options :-(

Also, Pentax doesn't have the owner's manual available from the website yet.
Their maximum resolution video mode is also a little strange - 1536x1024p30.

Could be interesting if you wanted to crop it to 1280x720

Looks like plenty of data rate for great footage. 58mbs for 720P 30fps is pretty good. This is an interesting option. It does have manual control in video mode. The GH1's 17mbs is looking pretty sad.

PentaxForums.com - View Single Post - Quality of K-7 video

"format *quality* "duration until 4GB full" -> MBit/s data rate / "kByte/image frame"

1536 x 1024p *** 7:23 -> 74.0 / 316
1536 x 1024p ** 10:22 -> 52.7
1536 x 1024p * 14:40 -> 37.2

1280 x 720p *** 9:26 -> 57.9 / 247
1280 x 720p ** 13:19 -> 41.0
1280 x 720p * 18:37 -> 28.4

640 x 416p *** 31:55 -> 17.1 / 73
640 x 416p ** 41:44 -> 13.1
640 x 416p * 60:57 -> 9.0 / 38


74.0 MBit/s or 9.2 MByte/s is twice the data rate of a Canon 5Dmk2, so far industry's best. Quality would be comparable, because of MJPEG vs. H.264."


1536 x 1024 at 316 kByte jpeg.

$1200 at B&H

Was actually selling off part of my Pentax gear for the GH1, but this K7 is also very nice:) Might be better video quality, but probably not nearly as useful...

Hope to see and read some more info soon, before I make an order on the GH1, considering the K7 is a way better stills camera with native support for all the nice Pentax glass. Then I would only have to have one camera and not the GH1 and K10D...

Interesting...

Thanks for that, Nathan, that's very interesting, indeed.

Unless, of course, your goal is shooting time. 9 minutes vs. 32 minutes is a pretty big difference. I suppose we'll have to wait and see comparison footage to see what kind of quality tradeoff there is between 58mbps M-JPEG and 17mbps AVCHD.

So it does have manual aperture control but nothing I've read yet says that it includes manual control over shutter and ISO or the ability to lock these settings like the 5D does once you get what you want. Anybody able to expand on what kind of manual control the K7 does have?

I suspect we'll have to find an owner to get the answers you/we are all looking for.

According to Pentax's webstore page the lens mount supports a power zoom function.

PentaxWebstore K-7 Body Only Kit

Also, if they're going to crank the bitrate way up as indicated, I hope they expand flash card compatibility from SD and SDHC to include SDXC.

According to a Pentax representative answering questions on another forum, ISO and shutter speed are automatic only in movie mode. That killed off my enthusiasm for this camera a bit.

It seems like their model for the movie mode was the 5D mk II, and they tried to get it as close as possible to that without actually listening to any of the common complaints about said movie mode or trying to improve on it.

I don't know about this... MJPEG is a much less efficient codec than h.264, even at that data rate I don't think the quality will be comparable. It's certainly much easier to edit though.

Why do folks keep comparing data rates of DIFFERENT codecs?