LCD, Viewfinder and Video
The K-5 shows no significant changes to the viewfinder from the K-7, which is slightly disappointing because we were not overly enamoured by it.
Although the pentaprism viewfinder has a 100% field of view that displays the whole scene, the view through it is quite dark. This is also the case with the data seen through the viewfinder, resulting in tricky viewing in dark, overcast and night-light conditions. That said, this did not deter me from using the viewfinder.
Live View is displayed via the 3in, 921,000-dot LCD screen. This is the same screen as found in the K-7, and the Live View button is to the right of the screen. I found the brightness, and the fact you can see exposure adjustments on screen as they are made, to be advantages of using Live View instead of the viewfinder.
Pentax has brought 1080p HD video to its DSLR range for the first time in the K-5, with a 1920×1080-pixel output at 25fps, while 1280×720 and 640×480 pixels are available at 25fps and 30fps respectively. There is an external microphone socket, and HDMI connectivity to view moving and still images directly onto a television.
Despite the plethora of post-capture editing available for still images, none can be used in-camera for video clips. The start and end times can be clipped and the excess footage is either discarded or saved as a new file.
