Pirich's Full Review: Pentax K-7 Body only Digital Camera
The Pentax K7 is a brand new approach to a high end Digital SLR camera from Pentax. Gone is the blobby body, and in its place an eager to perform no-nonsense workhorse which is compact, practical, and weather resistant. I predict this camera will be a benchmark for when the DSLR became less like an electronic toy and more like the rugged SLRs of the past. Background
The Decision to get a Pentax K-7 was a sort of watershed for me since it meant leaving the Minolta Maxxum heritage system I had been using since 1985. However, the decision came down to what was available in features today, and the Sony SLR unit seems stuck in a rut of delivering tiny gradations of the low-end SLR and just isn't producing anything I would consider a real follow-on to the Maxxum 7D I would be migrating from. The features I wanted include: Live-view focus on the actual camera detector. I do astrophotography, and getting a good focus is an extremely difficult task. Camera based image stabilization- this worked quite well on the Maxxum 7D, and holds the costs of lenses down. A set of good lenses from the camera OEM. I have had trouble justifying a Nikon D300S when I would be buying it to use with Sigma and Tamron glass. Movie Mode: This is no longer a novelty, but means being able to get good video through a good lens when you have one camera. I initially was mainly considering Canon and Nikon cameras, but the cost of the hardware seemed quite high for what you got, and all of the lenses with vibration reduction were much more expensive. I also became concerned about how no two stabilized lenses appear to behave the same way. Learning some basic steadying technique with the Maxxum 7D I had been using enabled me to reliably take photos at 1/6 second exposure. The Pentax K-7 had just come out and so I went online to see if I could find a dealer in Tucson. Unfortunately, it turned out you could order one through Wal-Mart, but getting to see one just wasn't going to happen. Pentax has standardized on the APS (28mm) sized chip format, and has issued a large set of lenses for this size alone. This is a break from Canon and Nikon who have two tiers of cameras with smaller sensors and larger sensors, and divided lens sets to support them. The PDF of the manual looked promising, and I had heard the build quality at Pentax is really good, so I decided to take the chance and try it out. Description
The Pentax K-7 has an appearance I can only describe as looking like a "Real Camera." The body isn't blobby with blended features expanding its size. Instead, the housing is compact and straight edged, and obviously smaller than the old Maxxum 7D. The body is rubber armored, and all of the doors and access panels have seals. The camera feels quite dense and solid thanks to its small volume, but the overall weight is less than its competitors, so it is actually more comfortable when carried on a neck strap. More interestingly, the camera has an external interface based on striking a balance between scads of buttons and endless surfing through menus. Any function needed in everyday life is quickly accessed by its own button or knob. For example, the drive control to use self timer (and choose the delay), continuous, or wireless remote modes are accessed with the time delay button- and are only one level deep. Critical functions like autofocus zones have their own switched control to immediately change mode. Note, features most manufacturers have you surfing menus for, like ordering the camera to take a RAW image, have their own button- when you suddenly realize you need the best quality for what you are about to shoot, you can order it up instantly. What was new for me was the Pentax "Green button" which has the effect of resetting the camera to an immediate automatic best guess. So, for example, you have just been playing with exposures to photograph the landscape and notice the kids are doing something you have to get a picture of, hitting the green button will override whatever you have been up to and make a best guess.
The lens situation is somewhat interesting because the Pentax K-7 supports both mechanically driven autofocus lenses as well as self-driven ultrasonic motor lenses. What the camera does not support are lenses with a mechanical iris drive. All Pentax K compatible lenses will attach to the K-7, though.
Usage
This Pentax K-7 has a lot of features, and rather than summarize the manual, I am going to go from direct experience. Since I have large hands, I was concerned the K-7 would be difficult to handle given its small size. However, the molded grip aligns well in my hand, and the lack of a "Left grip" has actually been a bonus since it means the lens barrel is easier to grasp. First and foremost, the K-7 is built around automatic features and having intelligent ways to keep them under control. It has a setting on the function dial with a green block, which when selected, is full auto with a basic image format selected. So, if you see a hummingbird out the window and have no idea what the camera was set for last, set it here. When turned on, it boots up very quickly. The main constraints on the basic green mode are: -It assumes JPEG images. -The green mode will NOT select a lens aperture faster than f/4. So if you are using an f/2.8 lens to get good pictures indoors, you can't use its performance in green mode. -The green mode will wait for autofocus to be achieved before allowing you to take a photo. This can be a problem in dim light, and the camera has a green LED illuminator to help focus. However, the only way to ensure the camera will shoot is to go to manual focus.
The camera has what Pentax calls a "Hyper mode" adjacent to the green mode, which is denoted by a white P. When first selected, this actually is the green mode, and behaves the same way. What is interesting here is the camera allows the photographer to override settings. So, for example, when the automatic f/stop selection bottoms out at f/4 on your nice f/2.8 lens, rolling your thumb on the rear roller will allow you to select f/3.2 or f/2.8, and will automatically push the shutter speed to make up for the difference. This works so well, I'd suggest the aperture priority and shutter priority modes will only rarely be required. The hyper mode also allows full control of the K-7's amazing white balance capabilities. While most cameras have presets for auto, tungsten lighting, daylight, and so on, the K-7 has a full 3 axis color control. White balance thus lets you select a parant balance, let's say Tungsten lighting, and then arbitrarily push that color in any direction, say more green or blue, magenta, or cyan. The white balance button also has immediate access to special effects, like black and white, vivid color, and so on. With that said, the automatic white balance on this camera works far better than any I have previously used, with it automatically making tungsten lit scenes look white instead of orange tinted. I can see a lot of experimentation ahead with white balance on the K-7. The movie mode is a bit similar to the green mode in that it rules out some of the lens settings- for example, it bottoms out at f/8. The lenses do allow for manual focus, and this is all you would have in movie mode. I will post an update as I get more experience with this feature. Suffice to say for now the scene must be well lit for this to work well. The image stabilization on the Pentax K-7 is practically a background task the photographer doesn't have to think about. I selected it in its menu, and turned on the rotation correction feature (it ships with this off), so the camera uses its sensor movement capability to stabilize the image and drive out small errors to holding the body level (something the optical stabilizations systems can't do). In experience so far, my subject moving is the main source of blur. The camera separates its manual and bulb modes with the master selector switch. Because of this, using the bulb setting doesn't require a strange manual setting different from what you were using. Or to put it another way, between the manual, bulb, and saved USER modes, the K-7 provides plenty of ways to store a custom shooting setup for use later. The camera's high dynamic range option is stored under the USER setting, and the camera will automatically take three exposures with bracketing to extend the dynamic range. I am planning to use this on the next new crescent moon to see if I can photograph the bright and dark sides. I will update with how that turns out. The camera has a built in 3"montor with 920,000 pixels, so images shown on it look crisp and bright. The info button allows access to the zoom feature using the rear roller switch, so the image can be magnified. All in all, this works quite well, though it doesn't have a swing-out feature like some other cameras. Image quality overall is quite different from my previous camera. In most modes, some fine pixel dithering is visible at highest magnification. At around 6 megapixel size, this isn't visible, but quickly becomes more so at higher magnification. I suspect this effect is part of the reason for stopping the rush to higher pixel densities on these cameras (that and the 6 megabyte files they produce already). I will post more on this effect when I get a chance to do some high resolution landscape photos, next. Note, the K-7 does less internal noise reduction than many other cameras, so there is a factor here where the camera is preserving the original information in exchange for smoothness, which can always be done in post-processing on your computer. Since I plan to use this camera for astrophotography, this is a plus for me since the noise reduction routines eliminate parts of dim images. I currently suspect I am also seeing the image grain because I am shooting in regimes I didn't used to use, thanks to the biggest feature I can't see on the Pentax K-7: its silence. The K-7 is substantively quieter than any SLR I have used, and because of this, I have been attempting photos of my kids at close range I was never able to do with louder cameras which alerted them. This combined with using fast lenses has had me pushing the K-7 to its performance limits without a flash. And that is perhaps the best compliment a camera like this can get- it works so well, it gets used in situations were other cameras wouldn't be used at all. Conclusion
The Pentax K-7 is a highly potent DSLR camera in a very small form factor. The wide breadth of control the K-7 offers makes it a real contender for semi-pro, if not professional photography. The large set of features would be daunting if the user interface didn't offer the ability to take them in a bit at a time and the green over-ride button to get out of trouble. In short, the Pentax K-7 offers a massive range of features and presents them in a controllable package at half the price of its closest competitors.
Recommended:
Yes
Amount Paid (US$): 1200 This Camera is a Good Choice if You Want Something... Solid Enough for a Professional
Limited Time Offer! $100 mail in rebate on this camera with the purchase of select Pentax lenses , see rebates ond offers for more details More at Beach Camera.com
Limited Time Offer! $100 mail in rebate on this camera with the purchase of select Pentax lenses , see rebates ond offers for more details More at BuyDig.com
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