Pentax Q Mirrorless Digital Camera Review

Motion

We found the Pentax Q offered decent motion rendering, as there was little in the way of interference. The automatic exposure did tend to utilize slower shutter speeds, resulting in some extra blurring in our motion test's RGB pinwheel. There was also sampling errors and aliasing present in our monochrome pinwheel that became distracting when in motion. More on how CamcorderInfo tests motion.

The Olympus, Panasonic, and Nikon comparison models all rendered motion equally well or better than the Pentax Q, though they tended to suffer more from ghosting and trailing, with some issues with artifacting across the board. The J1 shot video that was very similar to the Pentax in terms of artifacting and motion response, though we found the Nikon's video to look sharper overall.

Video Sharpness

We found the Q was able to resolve detail at a frequency as high as 550 lw/ph vertically and 500 lw/ph horizontally. This is right in line with the better cameras utilizing a similar size sensor (1/2.3'', as found in most point and shoot cameras), and actually put it right alongside many of its compact system camera peers utilizing larger sensors. More on how CamcorderInfo tests video sharpness.

Low Light Sensitivity

The Pentax Q, despite its small sensor, needed just six lux of light for it to register 50 IRE on a waveform monitor. This is right in line with what we typically see out of interchangeable lens cameras with much larger sensors. Beyond that, noise did not increase appreciably, so if the camera was greatly boosting ISO sensitivity in order to achieve that result, it did not greatly detract from the image.