Having lurked around the DPR Pentax SLR Forum for about 3 minutes, it is not difficult to notice all those adverse reports by different new K-7 users:-
Six K-7, all Failed (Buggy and Quality Issues):
http://forums.dpreview.com/forums/readflat.asp?forum=1036&thread=32529245
Poor IQ and noisy images as judged by a professional user:
http://forums.dpreview.com/forums/readflat.asp?forum=1036&thread=32530388
The vertical line bug (First discovered by me and talked publicly for a production K-7) appears again and void very nice shots (as they should be):
http://forums.dpreview.com/forums/readflat.asp?forum=1036&thread=32370822
Do note also the rather noisy image at ISO 400 only!
Short battery life, very long time to charge:
http://forums.dpreview.com/forums/readflat.asp?forum=1036&thread=32530010
Oh, well..
I think for all those numerous issues and problems as well as the low IQ performance of the K-7, meaningless firmware updating on minor things like sesames won't help! Will it?
I used to quite enjoy your blog but lately you seem to have become somewhat bitter and twisted. It seems to me are are actually enjoying rubbishing the Pentax brand which is a pity because all the brands have their teething troubles at the beginning.
ReplyDeleteMy biggest grievance with your writing is your lack to research the internet objectively . Your writing is propaganda and is used for centuries to force an opinion on others. Sadly it's somehow effective :(
ReplyDeleteIf you refer to blogs, articles, forum posting etc with the motivation to back up your predefined thinking and opinions then you are only finding your truth. But is it the real truth? There are a lot of post, reviews and articles which are in contradiction with your truth, but a good honest blogger would mentioned those the same as the negative.
This blog article is probably the best example of it (propaganda). The post links here are surrounded on the same site with positive views and opinions. But you are careful ignoring those? Why?
Nevertheless i find it amusing to come here, although not for excellent information.
Bye4Now
Richard.
Six K7's failed out of how many sold? On the internet, all you hear from are the bitchers and whiners. The satisfied users are out taking pictures (as it should be).
ReplyDeleteAs a professional user myself, I am quite happy with the K7 IQ.
Of course, I have taken the time to dial in my camera's AF, and am using best quality lenses.
There is no way of knowing if the professional user you are quoting is really a pro photographer. He could be a child pornographer for all we know.
Pentax has decided to go after detail at the expense of noise. My K7 images have better IQ than what my friend's 50D is giving him. The noise reduction in that camera positively kills image quality.
Verticle line bug seems to be a problem when the internal temp reaches 35ºC and may be exacerbated by the weather sealing getting in the way of sensor cooling.
My first shoot with my K7 was over 1600 shots on one battery. I don't know where you are getting your info regarding battery life, but it is bad information.
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ReplyDeleteAs an aside regarding the "soft jpegs". This has been beaten to death since the *istD was first marketed. Pentax has taken a less aggressive approach with the default sharpening settings. These settings are adjustable and can be taken farther than most any normal photographer would want with the in camera settings, and can, of course, be taken farther still in post processing.
ReplyDeleteOne thing I learned early on in digital photography is that sharpness and saturation are more easily added than subtracted (impossible in the case of over sharpening).
Kicking Pentax for soft out of camera jpegs belies a lack of understanding of setting up a camera and digital photography in general.
I´m the one with the 6 K-7s which had some issues.
ReplyDeleteI wanted to add, I STILL want the K-7...what does that tell you about it?
I must admit that i´ve been very picky on these very first bodies - I maybe should have kept the one with dust or the first one with only some minor video issues.
I wrote my post to air my frustration about the uneven level in my otherwise fine 6th K-7 this morning. This post got a little too much attention, blowing it more up than it is really worth.
I think you´ll might miss the best DSLR in 2009 IMO.
And I think you should make some peace with this "K-7" thing of yours too.
> Bill said...
ReplyDelete> As an aside regarding the "soft jpegs". This has been beaten to death since the *istD was first marketed. Pentax has taken a less aggressive approach with the default sharpening settings. These settings are adjustable and can be taken farther than most any normal photographer would want with the in camera settings, and can, of course, be taken farther still in post processing.
> One thing I learned early on in digital photography is that sharpness and saturation are more easily added than subtracted (impossible in the case of over sharpening).
> Kicking Pentax for soft out of camera jpegs belies a lack of understanding of setting up a camera and digital photography in general.
The infamous Pentax Soft JPEGs are NOT about a low level of *sharpening*, but just low resolution with less image data and details, which are lost. This has been proved again and again for years, by various different testers. And I had also verified that too. See this.
I'm afraid so far the only Pentax DSLRs that do not suffer from the Soft Jpeg syndrome are only the K100D/S and the K-m (Olive only?).
> Indots Wrote, ”My biggest grievance with your writing is your lack to research the internet objectively . Your writing is propaganda and is used for centuries to force an opinion on others. Sadly it's somehow effective :(
ReplyDelete> If you refer to blogs, articles, forum posting etc with the motivation to back up your predefined thinking and opinions then you are only finding your truth. But is it the real truth? There are a lot of post, reviews and articles which are in contradiction with your truth, but a good honest blogger would mentioned those the same as the negative.
> This blog article is probably the best example of it (propaganda). The post links here are surrounded on the same site with positive views and opinions. But you are careful ignoring those? Why?
I think you SHOULD read the basics of my site for Why This Blog and This Disclaimer.
I can't speak to your "testing" methodology, since I don't know what your motivations are. It is pretty easy to prove what one is motivated to prove, so there isn't necessarily nay truth in your claimed results.
ReplyDeleteWhat I do know is that my *istD in camera jpegs could be set up easily to look very close to the Nikon D70 that my studio partner was using when those cameras were current and my K7 and the K20 I used prior could be set up to give out of camera jpegs that were very similar (but with rather higher IQ) than his more recent D300. The slight IQ increase was, we figured, due in part to the higher pixel count and also my use of top quality Pentax primes.
These findings didn't involve flawed "testing procedures" designed to give a result, it was just a couple of guys who have 70 years of professional photographic experience looking at files on a high end monitor and accepting what our eyes told us.
The decision that we did make from this was that any work that required very high resolution, such as copy or technical photography was going to go to the Pentax, not the Nikon.
At the end of the day, all that matters to me is getting good pictures.
Really, that is all that should matter to anyone who calls themselves a photographer. Photographers pick the equipment that does what they want it to do, they learn it's strengths and weaknesses and base their purchasing decision on whether they can live with the weaknesses and take advantage of the strengths.
It sounds to me that you have decided that you can't live with Pentax's weaknesses, what I don't understand is this ongoing and pointless vendetta. You have a chip on your shoulder about Pentax. That's OK. I have a chip on my shoulder about Canon and their fucking over of their entire customer base. This made me take an anything but Canon decision when I was camera shopping.
However, being a sane and rational person, I'm not blogging continuously about what a ripoff Canon is because they screwed tens of thousands of camera system users.
Just buy a camera that makes you happy and go out and take some pictures.
Did you read the rest of what the 'professional user of DSLRs' wrote when it came to K-7 noise??
ReplyDelete"I am having a closer look at the files now in LR2 which I do not normally use as I find I get much better results generally from C1 Pro. It might be that the C1 dng profile is not giving the best saple of the k7 dng files. LR does when seem to improve the k7 dng files compared to some E3 iso samples. I think the olympus gives a little more sharpness but I see the the K7 does look alot better than my first thoughts and reason for the thread. "
Sigh... It's always confusing why you consider yourself to be objective when you clearly ignore all the posts from satistfied and happy users of the K-7.
ReplyDeleteI share some of your concerns about the quirks of the Pentax system, but your incenssant raging against Pentax is a bit much. You have been complaing how bad Pentax is for literally YEARS. How many hours and days have you spent complaining about Pentax in total? Will you look back when you're old, and consider it time well spent?
You have every right to write this blog and to express your opinions. But you really have to reprioritize your life.
My time spent in writing a personal blog is far less than those *active* forum "participators" who spent uncountable number of hours in defending, attacking and then defending (and attacking, forever, and endlessly).
ReplyDeleteEven I myself did "contribute" at those forums in the past, I found that the time required was actually much more.
Gentlemen,
ReplyDeleteUnfortunately, Pentax does have an issue with the K7's sensor. I made the jump coming from a K100D... the first ISO 100 and 200 pictures were ok, but after ISO 400... the noise became apparent. At ISO 1600 and 3200, pictures were horrible.
The camera went back, I'll keep my beloved K100D. I will have to wait for a decent solution by Pentax.
The K7's menu and available parameters don't deserve such a lousy sensor, shame !
Would be interesting if some reviewer made a comparison between several K7... what would the obtained data show? lousy quality control?
On one occasion, a fellow photographer was standing besides me shooting with a Nikon D300, we compared.... I felt shame and frustration...
I'm afraid K-m is the only choice of body in Pentax land by now as long as low noise and better IQ are concerned most. As you have said, K-7's sensor is just too noisy and it wastes just a nice body, as it should be.
ReplyDelete