K-7 is Already On Sales in Hong Kong! (?)

It seems that someone in Hong Kong has bought the K-7 from the street! Look!





See his unboxing post that is just published:-

http://www.dchome.net/viewthread.php?tid=708099&extra=page%3D1&page=1
(Text in Traditional Chinese)

I shall report back and update more by tomorrow to confirm this. It should be REAL!!

Update 6-13: It is found that this unboxing is actually NOT original! It's by Mr. Blurry Cameraphone once again:-

http://ivyjopy.spaces.live.com/blog/cns!9C2325683F4C3B9C!11251.entry

Well, this time it must be real as Mr. Blurry Cameraphone is just a staff of Pentax Shanghai of China!

Complete History of Pentax (Very Detailed)

Here is an excellent article about the history of Pentax (in Chinese, by Steven Lin, a talent Chinese blogger at Taiwan). In the article, very detailed history about the founding of the Asahi Optical Company, the origin of the trade name of PENTAX and the development of the Pentax system are told. And, particulars of Pentax cameras and lenses etc. as well as the important milestones in the history of Pentax are well summarised.

The article is updated to the end of 2008, up to the K-m, highly recommended!

http://stevenlins.blogspot.com/2007/10/pentax.html
(or Google Translation Here)

It is very interesting to learn in more details that the trademark/name of Pentax, which are rarely mentioned elsewhere, is that the name was actually meant a Contax camera with a Pentaprism! The tradename was created in 1952 and registered by the VEB Zeiss Ikon company of the East Germany. Several years later, in 1957, it was sold to the Japanese Asahi Optical Company. The ownership of the Asahi Optical Company on Pentax had been holding for long until 2001, when the company became a Corporation and a Holdings Limited, of which the family members of the Asahi Optical Company was still the major shareholder of the new "Pentax Corporation". In 2007, "Pentax" was finally sold to the Hoya Corporation. This time all the Pentax assets and human resources were sold, though.

Well, who will be the next Pentax owner then? Will HOYA own Pentax and keep the brand name for longer? That depends. If the new wave of Pentax DSLR products marketing campaign by Hoya can succeed, I think so. Otherwise, I bet the next purchaser will appear very soon as it is very likely Hoya will be rather eager to seek a buyer soonest if the unfortunate thing happens, i.e., still poor marketing and sales results.

Besides, the article also tells how the name of Takumar came. It was named to commemorate the deceased uncle of the founder (Mr. Saburo Matsumoto) of the Asahi Optical Company , Mr. Takuma Kajiwara, who was a famous photographer at Japan at that time.

As for other information about Pentax cameras and lenses, whilst those are yet concisely summarised and well presented, I think Bojidar Dimitrov's Pentax K-Mount Page has them all and in more details.

Enjoy reading.

An Experienced Pentax User's Trial on the K-7, Firmware Version 0.30

See:-

http://www.pentaxforums.com/forums/pentax-dslr-discussion/62819-experiences-new-k-7-camera-lots-imgs.html

(by experienced Pentax DSLR user Frank (Fengwei))

His report is self-explanatory. The non-testing photos posted look good and nice. In addition to what he has described and mentioned, I would like to add a few remarks:-

1. All his photos were produced by shooting RAW and then converted by Adobe Photoshop CS4. So, they are not direct images produced by the camera. And some sharpening was applied as told.

2. I don't agree that the Tungsten/Yellow Light Front Focusing Issue has been completely resolved. As seen from the posted test shots, Front Focusing disappeared ONLY IF the White Balance is Correct(ed). So, it seems that the hardware is still unable to detect the focus correctly under Yellow Light BUT it is just that the errors are corrected/compensated with reference to the colour temperature detected/measured. Of course, such kind of *software adjustment* for the correct focus point will not be totally reliable as it is just a *software algorithm* afterall.

3. Well, other than the above issue, I need to say those posted photos look very nice, in terms of image quality, sharpness and colour rendition. Skin tones are nice, too. Frank used some excellent Pentax lenses, though. Of course this contributes much to the high image quality. As for the kit lens, I think the colour saturation is just too high for the produced results. But then a proper/appropriate software setting or custom image setting could be used in conjunction to adapt for the characteristics of the kit lens, I think.

A Funny Presentation on the K-7 Mania

Well, the 1001 Noisy Cameras have funnily presented their latest explanations on the Pentax "K-7 Mania"! Here it is:-

Pentax K7 Mania

View more Keynote presentations from 1001 noisy Cameras.

Or you can read their original blog article here. There is much good sense of humour there, don't miss it! Well, even I am mentioned. Enjoy! :-D

One More K-7 Video Sample (Interesting)

(Direct URL: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zyi_oxvbNpY)

But, nearly all the videos in the joined clip (except the very first one) have no focus adjustment of any kind during recording. Well, I think you can see the effect of the occasional lack of focus. That may create a kind of effect as desired but on the other hand *when* you want the subject to be in focus most of the time or even just *sometimes*, then I am sure you will miss the proper focus a lot (and me too).

New Original K-7 Samples at Flickr, Firmware V0.35

Someone has uploaded some full size original pre-production K-7 samples at Flickr, the firmware version programmed is still 0.35:-

http://www.flickr.com/photos/tempete_de_pixel/sets/72157618888769445/

I have made some quick glances on some of the photos and my direct observations are as follows:-

First, look at this ISO 100 sample:-


(Click to download the *full size* original sample)

I find that the colours are good, exposure is good, details are good. As seen in the EXIF, a manual lens of 28mm was used (user entered focal for the SR and there is no aperture information). But however, if the picture is viewed in 100%, there are some little noise visible in the blue sky, even at the supposed to be finest setting of ISO 100.

Second, let's look at these two ISO 200 samples:-


(Click to download the *full size* original samples)

Both the outdoor shot and indoor shot are nice IMO. The same manual 28mm lens is used. Metering mode used is yet Centre-Weighted Average. The outdoor shot is a bit underexposed. You can regard this underexposure is normal and can be expected for this type of scene and especially considered that there was no exposure compensation applied. Btw, we cannot judge the exposure accuracy more exactly with manual lenses with stopped-down metering as there are always errors there anyway, still (see this quick experiment by Blende8 for some more details). With the sky underexposed, the noise are now even more visible for the blue.

Surprisingly, the indoor shot looks quite good. Noise are not very visible and nor the small grains look annoying even at dark regions. Well, I can see the lens in use has 10 aperture blades. What lens is this actually? :-)

Next, let's look at another ISO 400 sample, for the flower close-up shot:-


(Click to download the *full size* original sample)

The colour is very nice and well saturated (but yet still looks natural). The image details are good (just look at the in-focus core). Noise is okay for this mid-range ISO and they are not annoying neither (mostly are luminance noise with little chroma/colour noise).

Next, let's have a look at an ISO 800 shot:-


(Click to download the *full size* original sample)

I believe this shot was taken with the kit lens this time at 18mm, as now the aperture value has appeared. Whilst the image is somehow dark overall speaking, the noise control is good for this high ISO picture. Just look at the dark areas and you can again see the noise are acceptable, at least to me. The image sharpness is Okay (or you can call it so-so, possibly a lens issue as the details are still there). I haven't checked if Noise Reduction has been applied, though. Just go check with a Pentax Photo Browser yourself if you're really interested.

Finally, as for the white balance, most photos are okay, but sometimes I can see it is slightly off, just see this outdoor sample and I think it is just a bit blueish under the sun (and somehow overexposed too, particular for the sky):-


(Click to download the *full size* original sample)

Well, last but not least, I have heard from two reliable sources of mine that there will be a significant camera update to come on June 15 but they are not sure if it is just a firmware (software) update up to the version 1.0 or that a new production camera will be distributed (that means that it is also a hardware update if so). So, let's wait and see. Of course, I will let you know if there is something worth sharing and that I can tell.

Ephotozine Pre-production K-7 Review (with ISO Samples)

Well, they have done their "Review", but just on a pre-production unit:-

http://www.ephotozine.com/article/Pentax-K7-11613

As for the high ISO performance, they look Okay to me. The ISO 1600 noise is just acceptable, even for the low key-tone. It's not bad for an APS-C camera, IMHO.

However, what makes me most worried is not about the noise control this time, but is about the image quality of the K-7 as well as the focusing accuracy of the K-7. Just look at the silk flower object, the K-7 ISO samples are blur, with high loss of details and it seems to be somehow out-of-focus too. But anyway, the loss of details seem to be come from aggressive noise reduction actually. A quick comparison to other samples by other DSLRs will reveal that the image quality of the K-7 under this test is just TERRIBLE!

To compare further, you can check also various different samples from the K-m, GX-20, E-620 and 500D at the ephotozine review links below:-

K-m: http://www.ephotozine.com/article/Pentax-Km-10820
GX-20: http://www.ephotozine.com/article/Samsung-GX20-10669
E-620: http://www.ephotozine.com/article/Olympus-E620-11192
500D: http://www.ephotozine.com/article/Canon-EOS-500D-first-look-11352

Well, indeed, the K-m samples, especially the high ISO ones, look far better than the K-7 and the GX-20, despite that the white balance maybe a bit warmer (more yellowish - but which is another issue anyway). All the K-m sample images at any ISO actually reproduces more details than both the K-7 and GX-20 (just look at the centre of the flower), so does the E-620 here in reproducing more details. The 500D images are all overexposed and details are lost for the highlights, so it is hard to make the comparison. Afterall, it seems that Pentax/Hoya/Samsung are still unable to make better image quality with lower noise with any of their 14.6M sensors, and/or that the AF system still produces large errors (but why the K-m has NO problem, then? Or, is it a reviewer's problem - he just even doesn't know how to do the AF? Or even MF? Quality issue/Sample variation??)

Anyway, no matter for what reason(s) for the inferior results obtained, I am rather disappointed and actually it is really quite worrisome for the actual image quality of the production K-7s - IQ is the *most* important aspect for a camera! As the pre-production units should be more or less matured but not half-baked at this point - there is only 3 weeks left for the production K-7 to come, this review really shows no good sign for a better K-7 with sufficient IQ! Too bad.. :-(

Japanese K-7 Body Price, (US)$1,200

http://kakaku.com/item/K0000036023/

116,800 Japanese Yens for the Body Only, which is roughly equal to 1,200 US Dollars, and is $100 cheaper than the B&H listed price.

That is just a good news, which means that the K-7 can be sold cheaper.

More K-7 Full Size Samples, Firmware Version 0.35

At the PhotographyBLOG:-

http://www.photographyblog.com/articles/pentax_k-7_photos_and_video/
(Also with a Video Clip Sample)

A few quick observations of mine:-

1. Exposure accuracy seems to be good and consistent. No serious under or over exposure for various scenes and exposure compensation is not required, almost. Just look at the picture of the white flower, an object that is of a high reflectance, there is only certain level of underexposure but not by very much - it seems that the Matrix metering has already compensated for it somehow, although not totally.

2. It is told that the new WR version kit lens was used. But I am not convinced of the image quality of the photos as far as the lens is concerned. Resolution is not really that high even at the image centre at various focals. Various forms of blur can easily be seen off-centre (not even at extreme corners) and CAs can be seen too. Nonetheless, the tester liked to use the lens near or just wide opened even on a bright day. He just wanted to test how the lens will perform at wide apertures? ;-D

3. It's a mystery to me that they tell the Jpegs are directly from the camera but they post the RAW files too. They shot RAW and converted in-camera? (Edit: Ooops, it should just be the "RAW + Jpeg"!)

4. The quality of the video clip is just so-so. The video image is not that sharp and clear and it seems noisy with kinds of moire patterns too. It may be a Vimeo problem but I do believe if the source is good, even the downsized video picture will not be looking like that. The colours of the video is terrible and the Dynamic Range is rather limited, IMHO. The worst thing is: There is obvious jumpiness when played back. I played that on an Intel E8300 PC (Core 2 Dual 2.83GHz) with a GeForce 9800 GPU Display Card, so it is not anything related to the performance of my PC. I did download the whole video for the first time and then replayed it from the buffer, so it is not the internet connection speed again (and I do have a high speed internet connection, anyway). And, the mic (internal one?) recorded mostly wind sound and even those noisy vehicles could not be heard. So, afterall, what're the sources of the problems? You judge and guess yourself. (Compared to Ned's Video Samples, this one is just like Junk, frankly)

One More K-7 Samples Link

From the same person who shot the very first high ISO K-7 pictures:-

http://photo.zol.com.cn/photo_hjcad_208379_2.html

Images shot at ISO 100 to 500 are posted. These images are down-sized ones and were not produced in-camera but converted with Adobe Photoshop CS3. EXIF data are preserved, though. The version of beta firmware used is unknown owing to that the photos were CS3 converted and the firmware version cannot be seen in the general EXIF field. Maybe you can try to dig it out by PhotoMe or another viewer that is more powerful if very interested.

Nevertheless, I think those images still give us some ideas and initial impressions about the image quality of the K-7.