rei_vilo
Registered: June 2007
Location: Paris, France
Posts: 196
|
|
Review Date: Mon, 9 November 2009
|
Would you recommend the product? Yes |
Price you paid?: USD1,250.00
| Rating: 10
|
|
Positive aspects of the product (pros):
|
High built quality and great image quality
|
|
Cons:
|
Learning curve due to so many options
|
|
I've been using the K-7 for two weeks now and I think it's time to do a first wrap-up.
Pros
- Build high quality
- Compact, lightweight, dust- and water-sealed, silent camera
- Great image quality
- 100% viewfinder
- Excellent ergonomics, both hardware and software
- Many manual parameters to control almost everything
- Improved and faster AF, light metering, shake reduction, dust protectionl, live-view
- Detailed user manual
Cons
- Real learning curve due to so many manual parameters and options
- Camera grip could result too short for big hands, hence the need for the optional battery grip
- In some case, inconsistent light metering
Wrap-up
- Everytime Pentax issues a new dSLR, it's a revolution! First with the K10D, then the K20D and now the K-7, Pentax continues delivering dSLRs with incredible value.
- As always with Pentax, ergonomics and ease of use are great.
- But this comes at a price, in term of learning curve. A real work is needed before going and shooting on the fields: Which options I need? Which ones I'm going to use?
- As always and most important, image quality is there and I had a lot of fun.
Full review at http://sites.google.com/site/vilorei/photography/K-7-user-review
------------------------------
rei_vilo
K-7 + BG4 + DA* 16-50 + DA* 50-135 + DA* 60-250 + AF-540FGZ
sites.google.com/site/vilorei/photography
|
|
beatlephred
Registered: May 2010
Location: Down South
Posts: 1
|
|
Review Date: Sat, 15 May 2010
|
Would you recommend the product? Yes |
Price you paid?: USD950.00
| Rating: 10
|
|
Positive aspects of the product (pros):
|
Dedicated B&W with built in filters! Quiet. Great build quality. Improved auto exposure mode with pattern metering, PC socket, much improved low light autofocusing
|
|
Cons:
|
It's not free, pattern metering doesn't handle certain situations very well
|
|
Well, after 10 years in the digital realm, finally here is the camera I've been waiting for. This is the 1st camera which I've been excited enough about to spend time to review, after some 10 or so mainstay cameras. That I would spend the time to gather my thoughts (scattered far and wide) and write a review of the K-7 is perhaps the best recommendation in and of itself for the K-7.
First a little background, I've been in the darkroom and pursuing photography since I was 8 eight years old, starting with a Kodak Instamatic 126 which I got for Christmas in 1966 (you do the math). Was just told yesterday I wasn't too old to date a 23 year old woman (but they thought I was 35) so I guess all my clean living (ahem) has paid off.
I've been a professional photographer since 1992 and before that I worked extensively with my father who was for about 30 years a successful, brilliant editorial and commercial photographer (ie. offered a job with National Geographic) as opposed to myself, who have always been a very struggling professional photographer/designer. This is a disclaimer - if you don't have family money find another profession. It's not the 60's or 70's anymore! Don't care how effing good your work is. Or get a double major in imaging and business/marketing if you want to have a fighting chance, make powerful connections, pray a lot and knock on wood at least twice a day.
As either a photographer and or an assistant I've been involved in: Advertising campaigns (mostly regional), Corporate Annual reports (Duke Energy, Bank of America etc), product, portraiture, performance (music, dance, and theatre), architecture, food and editorial/documentary photography.
My main early experiences were with the Leica M3. I reluctantly moved to a Nikon F when most of my Leica Equipment (on loan from my father from when he worked as a newspaper photographer - pre SLR days) was stolen. Leica's were actually used by professional photographers for a while where as they are doctor, lawyer status these days.
My passion was for black and white street and documentary photography (Bresson, Kertesz, Winogrand, Eugene Smith, Eugene Richards) but I became enthralled with outdoor photographer Galen Rowell's color work in the mid 80's, and I've pursued Nature, Landscape & Environmental photography very actively for the past 25 years.
When I read a review - I want to know what actual experience the writer has - so that's why you just waded through all the above information. I really don't have a passion for team sports photography and have never done any aerial or extreme sports photography for example.
Now onto the equipment side; my first "real camera" a Kodak 35 rangefinder with a separate window for focusing, shutter with B,T and 1/10th - 200th of a second, F3.5-16. My exposure meter was the "sunny 16 rule" which actually worked very well outside with Tri-x and Plus-x.
After the beloved Leica M-3 which I used with a dual range 50 mm Sumicron for ultra closeups throughout the '70's and early '80's and in no particular order; 4x5 (limited experience), Rolleiflex TLR, Hasselblad, Pentax 6x7, Pentax 645, Nikon F, Nikon FM-2 (mainstay), Canonet, Olympus XA, Nikon F3T (mainstay), Leica M4-2, Leica M-6, Nikon 8008s, Nikon N-90s (mainstay), Nikon F 80 (???) (loved this camera but film was on its way out) and finally the Nikon FM-3 which I bought primarily as the last in its class, a beautiful all manual, small 35mm SLR and then on to the digital realm which I eased into slowly starting in about 1999.
I own none of the above now except for the Kodak 35. Had to sell the FM3 and all of my select manual focus Nikon glass last year to stay afloat(ahh the great recession of '09), so look elsewhere if you want to find a good collection of classic high end photo gear to steal!
After moving through progressively better digital point and shoots, my first digital SLR was the Pentax *st D (a great camera for a start) then the K10 which has served me (mostly) well until now. Pentax should still offer new firmware updates for this camera!
Why Pentax? At the time I gravitated to the digital SLR, DSLR, or whatever you want to call it, I relied heavily on wide angle lenses for nature and landscape imagery. I had a ton of Nikon glass (which was by and large excellent) down to a 20 mm but on a DSLR this would only give me the equivalent of a 32mm or something. Not wide enough for my purposes where generally I liked a 24 mm or 28 mm for broader landscapes.
I had to look for a great less costly and more compact system. The wide angle, larger aperture Nikon glass was all in excess of $1200 - big and heavy. I didn't need 2.8 for nature work. Nikon had also started a marketing ploy limiting the functionality of older lenses on newer bodies unless you went with the super high end and heavy camera bodies, this pissed me off.
Being primarily a nature photographer I didn't want to hike 10 miles in the mountains with a huge 35 mm camera and a huge, heavy wide angle zoom lens. If I were younger and stronger I would have opted for a larger format; either the Pentax 6x7 or 645. The Nikon FM-2 and a 24, 35, 135 and 200mm lenses with extension tubes made a great lightweight assemblage for landscapes, street shooting, portraits, larger animals and close-ups. I craved something akin to this conglomeration in the pixelation nation.
Canon? No, same thing as above. Having worked fairly extensively with the Pentax 645, I knew Pentax was the sleeper company. My father used a Pentax 6 x 7 extensively for architecture and close ups with beautiful and stunning results. Pentax glass was good to great and Pentax was starting to release small single focal length lenses, so there was the possibility again of putting together a kit to equal my Nikon film kit.
Now after all of that - my quick review of the K-7 (re-read the 1st paragraph if necessary!). All the cameras' specifics are elsewhere on the web with numerous bland, and generally pointless and uninformative test shots.
I've been doing more and more event photography and the K10 was not cutting it in the autofocusing area. I was missing half my shots because the camera wouldn't focus and I couldn't see well enough through the screen to focus manually.
The photos from the K10 generally all needed tweaking to meet my standards whereas the photos on my girlfriends Pentax K100d were great straight from the camera to the web. I needed that ease when posting 500-700 photographs from an event or wedding and the K-7 delivers on that front. Less time in front of the computer and more time shooting.
Now - No black and white conversions, this is the greatest thing about the K-7! You can think in black and white in the field and it's a different animal. You are stepping into dream time - one step away from reality but with enough reality that the world makes a different kind of sense. Sorry Paul Simon, Kodachrome was great but... Black and white with improved auto-focusing and metering makes this camera a stone cold killer.
When the camera arrived I was running around squealing (embarrassing, I know) "black and white, black and white, Tri-x, Tri-x" while my girlfriend was giving me looks like "okay you've really lost it now". If I have to explain it to you, you probably wouldn't understand anyway, pick up a Kertesz book or take a look again at Ansel Adams work!
Finally, an addendum on the relatively new Pentax 17-70 mm zoom, I don't care if the 17-70 is soft in the corners at F4, that's not how I'll use the lens in my real world situations.
Where I'd want this lens to be sharp in the corners, is on a tripod, stopped down for landscape work which it does beautifully. What I'm was more concerned about was at F4 - F4.5 and 70mm is the bokeh beautiful and will it give me enough sharpness for 2 or 3 faces in the center of the frame. Yes! Wide angle to medium telephoto with the ability to render a beautiful out of focus area on the long end and play with the depth of field, that’s a winner there. Sorry, I don't shoot test charts for a living.
Love, peace & happiness! Shoot some black and white! You'll probably see some photos from the K-7 and the 17-70 mm lens soon at http://bentwalters.blogspot.com . Thanks for reading my review, hope it helps you out!
- Ben
|
|
