Full list of niggles:
28-105 WR
Why is the focus ring now closer to the body than the zoom ring? Easy to touch when holding the camera or zooming. Just going between horizontal and vertical orientation can accidentally turn the ring.
No clear infinity/near endstop for the focus ring is very annoying. I understand why, but I don't like it.
Charger
Green light while charging, off when finished? I wish manufacturers would stop doing this.
K-1:
When using one-touch bracketing with 2s timer, there should be no 2s waiting time between shots, it should only be between shutter press and the first exposure.
Bracketing with 2s timer should arguably always default to one-touch bracketing.
The camera gives no indication whether it is finished with an exposure. The darkframe shot gets counted down with "NR" in the top display, that's nice. But the main exposure is not indicated in any(?) mode.
When formatting, the most-recently-written-to SD card slot could be highlighted. Even better, give a date range of the images or even some thumbnails.
Camera estimates 195 (sometimes 200?!) DNGs on 16GB Sandisk card - but routinely gets over 300. Roughly: Maximum RAW image size I get is 75MB, smallest is 40MB. (Average 48MB over 2200 varied photos) Wow!
When zooming in to check focus in playback, it doesn't actually look like a full res top quality JPEG (see above). For easier focus checking, maybe manufacturers could offer zooming into the green channel of the RAW only. That would be a B&W image and the camera would have to do no mosaicing and the JPEG quality wouldn't matter.
When card slot 2 is filled up and card slot 1 has a fresh card, the camera will not switch to the other slot until cards were manually swapped around - unbelievable!
"Self-timer + continuous"- please increase number of shots from 10 to 16 (=four stops) or 99 or 999.
"Self-timer + continuous" should display shot count.
"Self-timer + continuous" - intermediate photos only show if using liveview mode
Bracketing shows no review of the photos while they are taken, only the last one gets shown- unhelpful for multiple long exposures.
if you try to delete an image after a burst of sorts (bracketing, cont), the camera takes very very long to complete the actions and is basically unresponsive in that time
when in liveview mode and you press the menu button, why does the mirror need to flip and then flap after you exit the menu. Just keep it up!
Entering the number of photos / speed of timer+continuous uses the menu button to cancel and the info button to enter. Both buttons are directly next to one another and have no specific texturing/shape.
Camera should indicate how much I am shaking in the viewfinder, see Sony A850.
Camera could take into account how shakey I am in order to select shutter speed in appropriate modes. Could give warning in other modes. Does any camera on the market do that?!
Use shake sensors to detect tripod in SR auto mode.
Electronic level could be written to exif/metadata and used by processing software (Lightroom). [Update: It is written, but not used by any third-party software apparently.]
Why not let the user define non-standard aspect ratios as framing help for their viewfinder markings?
The green button should return all (or at least more) menus to its default. For example, upon entering the single/continuous/bracketing menu, green button immediately should set to single shot (or whatever the active user mode has as standard).
If you are using a user-setting and then change a parameter, then there seems no easy way to revert to the saved settings. On the A850 you just go to another user setting and then return to the previous and it will be reset. On the K-1 you need to fully switch off the camera. [I guess some people will prefer this behaviour, I wish there was a button combo, ideally with the green button.]
The on-off lever has almost the same texture as the front dial and both are close - can be confusing.
AF/MF lever is awkward, even without gloves, have to squeeze thumb between lever and camera body or use fingernail. Pentax *ist DS or K-01 style slider was much better. Sony A850 button also much better.
AF/MF de/activate button does not allow toggle (Sony style), need to keep pressed which is awkward and hinders adjusting other controls.
Also, on screw-drive lenses that are not-quick-shift, the AF/MF change must be done mechanically using the lever, meaning that "not AutoFocusing" does not mean "ready for ManualFocusing". This is different from Sony/Minolta A-mount, which also uses shaft-driven AF but allows AF/MF toggle and turning the focus ring when toggled to MF (Sony/Minolta retracts the AF drive shaft upon button press). Considerably worse usability on Pentax.
If you AF with the AF button, then shutter half-press should be possible to set to AE-Lock. This seems very obvious?
Instant review and playback are treated as completely separate modes. You cannot directly go from instant review to playback, which would be helpful to review a recent series. (again, Sony does that)
In instant review, you cannot cycle through different display/info options (apart from toggling between luminance and RGB histogram) by pressing a "disp" button, you need to enter the main menu to change.
Similarly, in playback, to change the display/info options, you have to enter the display/info menu (four way controller down, then choose). Would be much faster if repeatedly pressing four-way-down just cycles through the options - like on basically all other cameras I've used over the last years.
Feature, not problem: scrolling through ISO options does not enter AUTO ISO. [That annoyed me a lot at first, but arguably, using the green button is better.]
no eye-sensor to switch off rear display. Having it permanently off is also bad, because it offers useful information that the top display does not. Surely the Minolta patent has long expired, it is so *so* useful, please everybody "borrow" it!
no viewfinder shutter (as on A850) - plastic slider-over thing is super annoying, gotta get my baseball cap out again (but not when windy), light leaks definitely can be a problem with 10stop filter
How does NR AUTO decide? A mix between exposure time and ISO, but it would be good to know in advance whether ot not a darkframe exposure will be done, even in auto mode.
Liveview overexposure warning (blinking) seems usually over-cautious by half a stop. [not a big problem due to good DR]
How does the camera decide exposure parameters in for example AV mode with Auto ISO? Camera often seems to prefer ISO 200 over ISO 100 and neither Auto ISO "slow bias" nor "normal" seem to use usual values: "Normal" sometimes uses very short exposure times for no good reason, increasing ISO a lot beyond base ISO and sometimes even beyond 200. "Slow" seems sensible for short focal lengths, but comparatively optimistic for long focal lengths.
For RAW shooters, three out of the four buttons on the 4-way controller are basically unnecessary. Maybe better to move the single/cont/int/... shooting mode to the CH/CL mode dial settings, then the four way controller can be used for AF point selection exclusively for RAW shooters and you can give JPEG shooters something else on the four-way-up button.
Only one choice of peaking colour - and it's white! Also no peaking in review mode (as on my old Sony Nex5). Highlight flashing is also white...
General interval shooting mode does not allow "immediate" setting for interval, for this you need to go to continuous mode. Only star trails interval allows "immediate" but then you only get 4K video, not full resolution stills.
No option to keep individual frames of multi-exposure modes?
changing magnification ratio in LiveView is laggy.
Perspective correction is neat but won't do much, why not offer digital perspective compensation in the crop modes? Personally, I would just shoot FF and then crop myself, but someone might have a use for this. (Rotation would not be possible without the camera doing maths, probably not a good idea.)
Perspective correction will throw off external lens correction tools but this is not Pentax's fault.
Liveview AF with screw drive lenses is not very good: both indecisive and inaccurate. It feels as if it wants to go faster than it can. Maybe offer a "slow but sure" option? [Edit: there seems to be a slow mode that the camera chooses "in emergencies", but the problem shows up earlier.] Liveview AF accuracy can be shockingly bad.
Took photos of an airshow, negatively surprised how out-of-focus normal phase detect AF-C shots were even with "focus priority" chosen. I have no been told that this feauture has been broken on a number of new Pentax cameras.
Just an observation: The SR system is audible, as if something is rolling around, including when "off". It's completely silent on the Sony A850 when off. In contrast the Sony buzzes when the SSS is working whereas it is virtually inaudible on the K-1.
[This seems to be caused by Pentax K-1 and Sony A850 using different SR actuators.]
Wake-up from sleep is very long, sometimes it feels that power on from off is faster than wake up from sleep.
Battery life worse than Sony A850, even when not using liveview (but worthwhile trade off for GPS).
Viewfinder lines, AF confirmation or electronic level not always easy to see. Electronic level is black, useless in the dark.
Flash exposure compensation is limited, even if the attached external flash is powerful enough.
When using adapted lenses or K/M mount lenses in M mode, older Pentax cameras would show you an lightmeter bar when pulling the DOF preview lever. This no longer works for lenses that do not bridge the appropriate contacts in the lens mount, including most M42 lenses.
M mode with old lenses does not readily show the dialed-in EC in the display (viewfinder or liveview) - just use the space of F-- to show it.
There seem to be only minor inconsistencies with stop down metering in M mode, both with M42 and K/M lenses, which seems to be mean the problems of the K3 have been fixed?
Lots of buttons, difficult with gloves and/or when you can't see them - wish the lighting function would illuminate them a bit.
Would be nice to have an option to keep the mirror up in continuous modes (tripod use for example).
No SR in movie mode
