That controller issue is unfortunate, but can I ask the obvious
question...do we get to see the model?
D
William Robb wrote:
Well, as promised, I did a model shoot with the K-7 today. I did not
get out for my expedition of photographic proportion though, so to say
I was a bit unfamiliar with the camera would be an understatement. The
model was very understanding of my lacking of eptitude and I was
getting the hang of the camera by the end of the shoot.
So, where to start.
The K-7 is much smaller than the K10/K20. More so than what one would
think. It feels much more compact in the hand, And I found I was often
over reaching for the 4 way controller.
More on that fiasco in a moment.
I shot almost everything today with the 70/2.4, though I did some
shooting with the 55/1.4
The vertical grip is amazing. It balances perfectly with both the
rather petite Limited lens, and the much larger DA* lens. Shooting
horizontal felt a bit cramped, I often found myself getting lost on
the 4 way switch and pressing the liveview button instead.
Shooting vertically, the 4 way is a reach if I use my index finger on
the shutter, switching over to using my ring finger for pressing the
shutter worked a lot better.
Now, about the 4 way controller.
Unless I've missed something, the 4 way controller is broken. By
default, it provides access to the various functions, and one has to
press the OK button to get it to work as an AF point selector.
Unfortunately, it won't bloody stay as a focus point controller when
set to that function. It takes every possible opportunity to revert to
function control.
Check your exposure with the instant review, when you go to take a
picture, you've lost access to focus point selection. Let the camera
go to sleep, its back to function select when you wake it up. Turn it
off and back on, it is on function control again. I believe I had it
revert a few times just because, and not for any reason I could fathom.
There is a little icon in the viewfinder that lights up to tell the
operator that the focus point controller is active, but I still found
it to be really annoying to have to be constantly resetting the function
Note to Pentax: Please put an option in the remembered settings to
allow one to choose what the 4 way switch defaults to.
The user mode is still broken as far as I am concerned. I would really
like the user mode to allow me to lock in a shutter speed and aperture
combination by programming it in manual mode.
It would also be nice to have multiple user setups available like the
istD had.
However, to get that I'm not willing to give anything else up.
I have my user mode set up to do HDR's, since I likely won't use it
for anything else.
Autofocus with the 70mm lens was quick and accurate enough most of the
time. The end focus point struggled a bit if I had the lights a bit
far away, but the more central AF points were quick to lock with very
little hunting. I'm quite certain that a timed test would show an
improvement in AF speed with this lens anyway. The 55/1.4 is another
story. AF was about as fast as with the K20.
The camera showed no focus inaccuracy under the incandescent modeling
lights, and the auto white balance is just about perfect.
I shot a grand total of 1584 images in just over 2.5 hours. That works
out to one shot every 5.5 seconds or some such. Other than the 4 way
controller issue, the camera was flawless for the entire shoot. The
camera is quiet and competent and very easy to use. There are a few
major differences between it and the K20 that I found a bit confusing.
as an example, I wanted to check the ISO before starting, and drew a
complete blank for half a minute regarding where to find it (the
button conveniently marked ISO is a good place to look).
Using an Extreme III 8gb card, the file writing light flashed for
perhaps a second and went out after taking a picture. The camera does
write files much quicker.
Interestingly, my DNG files are between 11mb and 12.5 mb.
This is about half the size of a K20 DNG, so I must presume that
Pentax has decided to compress them in camera. I hadn't heard anything
about this during pre release discussion.
Perhaps I slept through that class.
Oh and, the camera doesn't use power. I did the entire shoot with the
battery that came with it. After a while I kept expecting it to die on
me, but it just kept going. Almost 1600 shots on a single battery
using AF lenses, and I could have kept going.
I do keep my chimping to a minimum, but this is still pretty impressive.
The 70mm lens is one that I haven't used very often. I think that is
about to change though. It is a very pleasing little lens to use, and
returns really nice pictures. I have been finding manual focus under
studio light to be a struggle lately, even with the 85/1.4, so I
elected to go with AF. The lens performed flawlessly with the camera,
I don't think it missed focus once.
To compare the K20 & K-7 cameras on paper, the K-7 looks somewhat
better. The reality is that the K-7 is a much improved camera in most
every respect.
Fix the 4 way controller problem and the K-7 is pretty much the
perfect camera.
William Robb
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