Here's the story...

I was on a shooting assignement to cover the activities of a jazz festival this weekend and on the second night (friday) of the assignement, my K10D broke down. :x

The shutter just wouldn't work. I tried to clean up the mirror box in case some dust was jamming the camera, but to no avail. Placing my ear on the camera body, I can hear the shutter motor whine, but the shutter just won't open.

Luckily the camera broke down at the end of the evening, so I had shot all but the last stage performance, and I only missed half of this concert, so I had enough pictures. :|

But I still had to shoot the different stage and street performances on saturday and sunday. So saturday morning I went to the camera store I work at (part-time), I took the K-7 from the shelf and I dropped a 1599$ (less employee rebate) on the camera.

Fact is, I was thinking about upgrading to the K-7 for some time. But I came to the conclusion that I'd rather wait a few months more before upgrading (and luckily see the K-7 drop to a slightly lower price) and spend some money on good glass in the meanwhile.

So the upgrade was kind of... unwanted! LOL

Sure, I could have gone for a rental camera or borrow one from a friend (one person i know has a K20D, another has a Canon 5D, another has a 30D, etc.), but I was short on time so I couldn't take the chance ot end up with no camera at all: I had to buy.

I also could have bought a K20D (more affordable by about 600-700$), but I felt upgrading from a K10D to a K20D was not really worth it. Better buy the K-7, I though.

So I finished the assignement with the K-7 and quickly learned to get used to it. Call it a crash course...

Well, after two days shooting with the K-7, the overall feeling is pretty good. Below are some observations based on my first two days of shooting with the K-7. I still need to get used to the camera, so many of the issues are probably just based on my lack of experience with the K-7.

On the bright side, the pros are worth it:

* Faster and (slightly) more accurate AF.
* Very well built camera with nice ergonomics.
* Excellent viewfinder, especially the 100% coverage.
* Very nice features, some unique (I love the horizon level indicator).
* Improved menu layout.
* Excellent image quality at low ISO.
* Much quieter shutter, which is very useful when shooting jazz concerts! :D

But there are some cons, too:

* Tendency to overexpose (when compared to the K10D).
* Outdoor WB is cooler than with the K10D when used with presets (see below).
* Average image quality at high ISO (see below).

The exposure accuracy is not as predictable as with my K10D. Overexposure is a frequent issue, but I guess I'll get used to it.

As I already noted above, preset WB is kind of cool compared to the K10D. I did set the WB of my K-7 at 5600K for my outdoors shots, but Capture One interprets it as 6500K, while my K10D was interpreted as 5550K for the same WB setting. The difference is pretty notable and I had to correct all the outdoors shots with an average -1000K adjustment. This is the biggest issue I did find on the K-7 so far.

Now about the high ISO image quality, I must say that I shot all my high ISO picture with the high ISO noise reduction set to "OFF".

The image quality is still pretty good for such high ISO settings (I used ISO 1600 quite often, ISO 3200 on some occasions and even used ISO 6400 in one extreme circumstance), but I don't feel like it's an impressive improvement over my old K10D. I would expect a little more improvement more than two years after the release of the K10D. Still, the K-7 is a pretty good performer at high ISO, at least enough for most of my needs.

With the exception of the inacurate preset WB, all the other issues are probably the result of my lack of experience with the K-7 and will surely end up being less problematic when I get used ot the camera: as I start understanding the behavior of the K-7, I'll eventually know when to apply a negative exposure compensation to prevent overexposure and which high ISO noise reduction setting ot use to get the best results. I'll also have to mesure how Capture One deals with the K-7's RAW files before I can draw definitive conclusions.

But overall I really like the K-7 and I feel like it's only a matter of time before "I really like..." becomes "I really love..."

It's a great DSLR, with lots of improvements and lots of pros with only a few cons. It was not in my plans to upgrade and I had to do it out of necessity, but I really like the K-7 now, if only for it's excellent viewfinder, improved AF, excellent built quality, quiet shutter and great overall IQ.

Seems I'll have to push back my plans to get my hands on the DA*16-50 + DA*50-135 combo, though.
:(

Cheers,


--
If photography is painting with light, than I'm still at the painting with fingers level.

— Jeff