I stopped by fry's tonight to check out the k-x in more detail. The
sales woman saw me checking it out, and said that they had an open box
unit that I could actually try out. I grabbed batteries and an SD
card and played with the k-x a bit at ISO 6400.
I shot a few, realized that it was on JPEG, so I reset it to JPEG+.
These are some of the in camera jpegs, uploaded straight to flickr:
http://www.flickr.com/photos/ellarsee/sets/72157623363532670/
These are some of the raw files, processed in lightroom. Some of them
are cropped, none of them are resized, so original size is 100%:
http://www.flickr.com/photos/ellarsee/sets/72157623363649782/
These are some of the raw files, many of them cropped, some cropped
and uncropped, processed in lightroom to a max side of 1000 pixels:
http://www.flickr.com/photos/ellarsee/sets/72157623363684346/
If I were to get a K-x I'd sell my K100D super and use it as a small,
light camera. I'd also use it for ultra low light situations, if it's
sufficiently better than the K20. If it isn't enough better than the
K20 at low light, I'd probably hold off on the upgrade.
My quick impressions of it:
I'm surprised it seems to have the original 18-55 AL not the AL-II. I
guess it's cheaper to make.
The auto focus seems snappy, at least in a well lit environment. I
didn't do any serious test, but it may be faster than the K20, but I
rarely use autofocus.
It's actually just a little bit smaller than my K100. This is a good
thing, I'd get it as a "small camera" easy to carry in a fanny pack.
Overall the user interface seems pretty good. It's much better than
the K100, with separate buttons for autofocus, and live view. The
screen is nice and large. In retrospect, I didn't notice the lack of
the top LCD.
The back LCD is much improved over the K100.
The option of the color histogram is a welcome addition.
They changed the ordering of the AA batteries. Not a real problem, we
just had to try a few times before the camera worked.
I neglected to test buffer size and speed. I can't imagine it not
being better than the three shots of the K100.
The live view button on the back is pretty nice, live view seems to
work better than on the K20, but it still has an annoying amount of
lag when you press the shutter.
There are a lot of modes on the mode wheel. I didn't really
investigate them.
If there were lights in the frame, the auto exposure would increase
shutter speed by a stop or so, even if that's the only difference
between the shots.
Doing a thorough test would mean either finding someone who has one
locally I could play with for a day or two, or buying the open box
unit at Fry's, and returning it at the end of the weekend.
I wouldn't want to trade my K20 in on a K-x, but I think that the two
of them (or a K7 and a K-x) would make a great pair, each has some
advantages over the other. My hunch is that in over 95% of shots, the
difference in image quality between the two would not be noticed,
except when the UI of one allowed it to get a shot that the other one
missed.
And for those that are wondering, it's the Campbell Fry's on Hamilton,
that I went to.
--
Larry Colen [email protected] sent from i4est
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