An Useful K-7 Hands-on Report with Full Sized Higher ISO Samples

http://www.dchome.net/viewthread.php?tid=719617&extra=page%3D1
(Text in Traditional Chinese)

And the tester's observation and comments are as follows:-

1. AF is responsive outdoor, no hunting. But at lower light and when slower zooms are used, hunting occurred.

2. Screw driven AF is faster than SDM, he compared the FA 31 and 77 Limited (My Remark: which are the most famous slow focusing Pentax film lenses!) against the DA* 50-135 and he found that the film Limited were faster.

3. Metering is very very accurate.

4. Auto WB under white light source is good, not so for tungsten lighting. The new CTE mode is good too.

5. 5 FPS frame mode is fast but when used in conjunction with AF-C, frame rate dropped to around 2 FPS. (This is exactly the same as what a famous HK local magazine tested and reported.)

6. D-Range function is useful. He also likes the electronic level meter and the multiple exposure function.

7. SR seems to be more effective. No blur with a DA* 50-135 at 50mm and shot at 1/6th second!

8. Operations are good in generation and major functions can be directly accessed.

9. Built-in flash is accurate, no burnt-out was seen.

10. The Lock button of the mode dial is very *annoying*, which he finds it is just redundant and hinder operations!

11. LiveView AF is bad.

12. Noise level and control is not good. He remarks that he is a full frame shooter and that all those APS-C DSLRs are more or less the same (nothing comparable he means). He expects that the K-7 would be similar to the K20D in this aspect and he reminds us to be not having higher expectation for the K-7 regarding this. (:-))

13. There is colour cast on the LCD mon and it does not look accurate for brightness and colours neither.

14. He feels that the K-7 is just too expensive and should be cheaper.

And, he has posted full size high ISO samples taken at the same place and at almost the same time. The NR setting is defaulted. The jpeg images are compressed for upload:-

ISO 400: (Warning: Large Files!)
http://img160.imageshack.us/img160/3269/imgp9539.jpg

ISO 800:
http://img190.imageshack.us/img190/3975/imgp9541.jpg

ISO 1600:
http://img31.imageshack.us/img31/4599/imgp9544.jpg

ISO 3200:
http://img160.imageshack.us/img160/7126/imgp9548v.jpg

ISO 6400:
http://img31.imageshack.us/img31/8228/imgp9551.jpg

And, comparison shots between the K-7 and the K200D are also shown:-

http://www.dchome.net/redirect.php?goto=findpost&pid=8464323&ptid=719617

(GAME: You guess what the "Machine A" and "Machine B" are before looking at the EXIF! :-D Which test shots are from the K-7 and which are from the K200D??)