Pentax K-30 Digital Camera Review

Motion

The Pentax K-30 rendered motion fairly well, but it struggled with some artifacting and ghosting around select areas in our motion test. Sharpness also continued to be distractingly bad, with finer patterns seemingly fluxing as moire overpowered the image in parts of our motion test. More on how CamcorderInfo tests motion.

The Pentax K-30 doesn't perform a great deal worse than most DSLRs in our motion test. Its main issues are not related specifically to motion, but in terms of poor dynamic range and sharpness when capturing video. While motion isn't the culprit, this example just shows how poorly the K-30 fares compared to the high quality video-capable DSLRs on the market, some of which sit at similar sub-$1000 price points.

Video Sharpness

The Pentax K-30 struggled in our sharpness test, as it was unable to replicate more than 500 LW/PH of detail from our standard sharpness chart. Both horizontally and vertically, the sharpness of the final video image was limited by aliasing and averaging, resulting in heavy moire and gray beyond that point. More on how CamcorderInfo tests video sharpness.

Sharpness did not improve at all in low light either, with vertical sharpness falling slightly. We did notice somewhat less moire in the low light sharpness, but that's likely down to the difference in light level (60lux vs. a bright 3000 lux) on the chart itself. The K-30 also suffered from a rolling shutter effect, but that's expected with a large CMOS sensor and is common amongst all the DSLRs the K-30 would compete against.

Low Light Sensitivity

The Pentax K-30 required only 11 lux to render an image that hit 50 IRE on a waveform monitor in our testing. 50 IRE is a standard for what is considered visually acceptable. That puts the Pentax among the middle of the pack as far as DSLRs are concerned. The K-30 gets that low as it's able to use up to ISO 3200 when recording video, while the cameras that perform better in this test have a wider range of ISO speeds to call upon.