Pentax K7 :: PYKtures Reviews

Where as economy was going down, 2009 was an amazing year for the digital photography industry. Where as Canon and Nikon continued their struggle to supremacy, other brands would strive to produce cameras to enter the next generation of post ISO 1600 performance. Long overdue, the Pentax K7, a semi-pro camera pitched to compete in the field of the Nikon D300s, Canon 7D and Sony A700, was launched to bring a new era to the Pentax users and maybe, just maybe convince some users of other brands to jump ship to the land of the SMC lenses. Unanimous, many reviews gave editors choice to the Pentax K7; it was the best Pentax dSLR ever made. At the dawn of 2010, it claimed the prize of camera of the year. Now what to do with such hype? I was quite fortunate to have pentaxian friends would wield such equipment and truly benefit of their trust to let me use their gear for a weekend.



The shooting conditions were amazing: blue skies, sunny day. I wanted to go mountain hiking with the thing but chose the Mont Royal Plateau instead as testing grounds. My gear was comprised of the top dog stuff from Pentax:
- The flagship camera Pentax K7
- The professional grade zoom lens Pentax 16-50mm f/2.8 SDM

Let the game begin!


Shooting experience

I started shooting on Program mode. I was surprised at how customizable everything could be: you can customize the behaviors of the mode to prioritize resolution or shallow or wide depth of field. The camera also brings a new vision to auto ISO behavior: I could set it to use the slowest shutter possible (in relation to my focal length) or a faster shutter speed to freeze the action before changing to ISO value. This proved highly effective. While in Program Mode, I could also use the two wheels to quickly jump from program to shutter or aperture priority. Pentax calls it the “hyper” mode. It’s a nice buzzword. The high amount of in camera customization features made me feel like I was shooting with a camera in console mode. This isn’t a user-friendly camera; you need to know where you are going with it.

While the body felt as solid as ever, the button layout made menu operations with winter gloves impossible. I’m just too spoiled by the Nikon dSLR button layout. The viewfinder is large and bright but lack the focusing screen of this generation of cameras. I only see the bright red points when I’m using the autofocus. It takes getting used to.

The shake reduction makes it possible to use a slow shutter to keep the ISO value as low as possible. I just wished it could have a blur index indicator like the Sony Alpha does by this generation.

In terms of reactivity, I found the AF to be fast but that’s the only good side. The shutter felt a tad laggy like my D80 used to be (probably because it needs to activate the shake reduction engine before taking the shot). Such lag for a semi-pro camera goes quite below average compared to its competitors (the Canon 7D and Nikon D300s). 5fps is a welcomed addition, but when the time of your first shot is delayed, a high burst rate seemed to be there to help prevent the user from missing a moment. Such an issue isn’t that big of a deal if you get used it. Another annoying factor was the time the camera took to display a picture after a shot. Depending on the usage of image correction modules (shadow and highlight correction, distortion correction, etc) it goes from 1.5 seconds (with no image correction modules) to nearly 4 seconds (with image correction modules). Slow times like these are issues that I thought to be extinct to this day and age (I don’t even get those issues on entry level Rebels or Nikon d3000). It’s probably due to a poorly conceived color processor unit that wasn’t made to analyze 14.6 megapixels of data.







Image quality

Okay, the camera behaves at the speed of something that was made from three years ago. What about the pictures it can take? Mindblasting auto white balance came to me as a big surprise; it’s amazing. It nails every single scene I aim this camera at with great color accuracy. I found it to be better than anything I tried before. This is quite the achievement for Pentax whose AWB engine was weak from back in the days of the old k10d. Honestly, I didn’t have to correct the white balance a lot during the post-processing, just enhance some saturation and that’s it. For people who are looking to reproduce highly realistic colors right from the start, this camera makes it so easy. So far, I’ve been taking low to medium ISO shots all afternoon. What about low light? I’d say it’s good up to ISO 1600 but terribly noises up and loses color balance afterwards. The noise signature seems adequately grainy without too much color patches until you go post-1600. That’s an ISO stop better than a k10d. In theory, it’s great but leading cameras of 2010 in the class of the K7 have already mastered the ISO 3200 sensitivity and are aiming to get to an acceptable ISO 6400. I have no doubt in the sensor recording a lot of rich details. The image quality gap between the K7 and the K10d is huge but it doesn’t match its peers.


Video Mode

The Pentax K7 live view and video modes are quite enjoyable to use, while the fun last. Overpowering a slow color processor to process the data captured by a high- resolution sensor while keeping the shake reduction mechanism active takes a whole lot of energy out. Thus, the camera loses energy very quickly. In the K7’s defense, I’d say that the audio-video quality is a whole lot better than Nikons. Having the shake reduction active makes shooting hand held without a complicated rig system possible too. This is a big success for Pentax.


The defective lens issue

One very frustrating thing happened to me during the testing; the 16-50mm lens seldom failed to focus on objects that stood beyond 1.5 meters of distance even when I was using the center AF-point. At first, I thought the lens was soft at certain aperture values so I called some friends to look into the lens’ MTF chart to look for the sweet spot of sharpness. Then I was a bit surprised of the lens’ softness wide open for something of its grade (this is a pro-level high grade lens after all). After doing some digging, I might have been using a lemon. Having no other lens to use, I had to put up with this problem for the duration of the test. My friend didn’t have issues using his other lenses with the K7 so this might be an isolated problem. If possible, I’d like somebody’s input on the matter.


Food for thought

For a 2010 camera of a semi-pro class, such slow overall operation is difficult to bear for today’s standards especially when other competing brands in the business are producing similar results with much more responsive bodies. It’s weird go use a camera of this generation that has issues from the era of the Nikon D200 that I expected to be fixed and perfect already. Maybe I was spoiled in testing Canon and Nikon cameras of the same class or above. Then again, Nikon D300s and Canon 7D cameras have different aims in design and application that derive more from photojournalism and moment photography.

In the camera market, there are products that were designed to comply with specific applications. Some even sacrifice some aspect of their overall performance to do so. For example, the Canon 5D is less reactive than the Canon 40D in movement photography but excels in resolution, depth of field control and ISO performance.

I believe Pentax is no speed demon and justifies it partly. For my sake, I love my D90 more than anything except the D700, which I consider being Ze perfect caméra mainly because do a lot of street photography. For landscape, portraits and still life specialists on a budget, this camera is something to seriously consider using as it produces shots with unmatched color accuracy with great resolution figures and details at low ISO. You can even call this, the poor man’s D2x. The Pentax lens library is also filled with amazing limited prime lenses to match the K7’s sensor it’s just a shame that you can’t benefit from the shallow depth of field they offer when used on a full frame body.

So who might buy this? Pentax users upgrading will see this as the second coming of Christ while users who already have a body in other brands might not find the appeal of jumping ship.

Is this the Camera of the Year 2009? It is probably on paper (buzzwords like 14.6 megapixels, shake reduction, 77 weather seals, magnesium body, HD video lead the way of the future). As far as it stands, it more like a joint marketing stunt that the camera magazine editors were trying to feed us.

Recommended with caution.

more sample pictures taken with this great camera!