K7 loses big time

[wayne_campbell]

<p>K7 loses big time.</p>

<p>http://www.ephotozine.com/article/Nikon-D90-Canon-EOS-550D--Pentax-K7-Comparison-Test-14333</p>

[donnie_strickland]

<p>They say, "ISO 100 not available on the Pentax K7."</p>

<p>Since when? It's certainly available on mine.</p>

[mc2imaging]

<p><strong>Troll.</strong></p>

[mountainvisions]

<p>this is interesting...the K-7 most certainly has a base iso of 100.<br /><br />worse, this isn't a typo, they clearly didn't test it at 100. <br /><br />gotta wonder if they even tested the camera at all!</p>

[personalphotos]

<p>Am I on drugs or did the article start off wrong in the very first section. NO ISO 100 on the K-7???? Did they have it in DR mode and not know how to use ISO 100?<br>

Second they use a kit lens on the Pentax and not the kit lenses on the Canon and Nikon. What hogwash. All 3 offer the same 18-55mm kit lens and why wasn't that lens used on each? In test 5 they test Multi, center and spot metering of the 3 and in the Pentax test they omit the Multi metering, showing Center Weighted twice and then spot?</p>

<blockquote>

<p>Test 7: The <strong>result closest to that came from the Pentax K7</strong> showing some weighting towards getting the blacks in the lower half of the histogram. The Canon was next best in terms of picture appeal and the least attractive, but most directly accurate in terms of metering the elements in the picture, was the Nikon. Unfortunately<strong> it managed to mess up the white balance</strong> to give the white woodwork a distinct blue cast.</p>

</blockquote>

<p>So if the WB was off, how was the Nikon better????<br>

Since I shoot both Nikon and Pentax, as the test showed, Pentax AWB and even the presets are superior to both Canon and Nikon. So at least on that point I agree and getting it right in the camera is important even with all the software we have available today. In tough, mixed light, if the camera does it wrong, sometimes you just can't fix it afterwards.<br>

I stopped there, there are so many inconsistent issues in the first few "tests" that it's not worth reading more.</p>

<p>The choice in lenses alone is enough to toss this one in the bin.</p>

[mountainvisions]

<p>wondering another thing, why are the Pentax images so dark...from my own experience the metering on the K-7 is pretty good. Pentax metering isn't fooled by such simple scenes.<br /><br />I'm wondering even more if there was even a test of the K-7 or if this is a troll by some Nikon fanboy. Too many little issues in reading the first 2-3 sections.<br /><br /><br /></p>

[jgredline]

<p>As a person who has been critical of the K-7's noise output I can say this.... From scanning the article, I will say it is a bunch of BS....This is really bad journalism....First, I have my K-7 set for max DR range and that is at the expense of ISO 100. But I also know how to turn off the DR range for the two times I used ISO 100...Seriously, this is bogus! </p>

[sumo_kun]

<p>Maybe they were bribed by canikon to put down the Pentax?</p>

[jeremy_corbin]

<p>I'm beginning to think that some fanboys are scared... and are trying to beat #3 down. Frankly, until I see a blind shoot out where someone shoots identical scenes and hands them over to someone else as A, B, and C cameras than I'm not going to believe anything but personal experience and trusted friends.</p>

[mountainvisions]

<p>Haha, 4 shots in RAW with the K-7...sorry even with the slowest card in the world it is impossible for the K-7 to fill up at 4 shots because the internal buffer has nothing to do with the card speed. <br /><br />If this wasn't a troll, it's the worst review ever. Just reading it and comparing the specs to the Pentax or even dpr site would raise some eyebrows. <br /><br />There are always potential errors in a review, but for every section to be seemingly filled with them makes me wonder what went through the reviewers head as he hit publish on clearly erroneous data.</p>

[sfcole]

<p>The k-7 images are very obviously underexposed, as others have pointed out.</p>

[jgredline]

<p>It is interesting to see how the K-7 they ''TESTED'' seems to blow out the skies. I have found the K-7 to control that very well. </p>

[mountainvisions]

<p>Haha, 4 shots in RAW with the K-7...sorry even with the slowest card in the world it is impossible for the K-7 to fill up at 4 shots because the internal buffer has nothing to do with the card speed. <br /><br />If this wasn't a troll, it's the worst review ever. Just reading it and comparing the specs to the Pentax or even dpr site would raise some eyebrows. <br /><br />There are always potential errors in a review, but for every section to be seemingly filled with them makes me wonder what went through the reviewers head as he hit publish on clearly erroneous data.</p>

[lauren_macintosh]

<p>All I can say is that report seams to be flavored for Nikon more than anything else . Everyone here knows what their camera can and can not do: why do we bother with such junk:?</p>

[dshombert]

<p>Aw, geez, now my camera's no good. Darn it, I got some really great shots with it over the last year - only to find out that it's a piece of crap! Well, it's been nice, fellas, but I have to go delete all my K-7 pictures now.</p>

[mountainvisions]

<p>Lauren,</p>

<p>I think it's more shock that something so completely wrong could be published as a definitive head to head test. It's not as though it was a few lines on someones blog or a forum post. It was what appeared to be at a quick glance a thorough head to head test, certainly a few people considering Pentax will look at that and go, nope, not gonna buy that. While many of us here actually like the underdog status of Pentax, and really don't want Pentax to turn into Canon/Nikon/Sony, Pentax still has to sell cameras to keep producing the goodies that we all enjoy.</p>

<p>Obviously some people, such as the OP read it and believed it. Unless of course he read it, thought the same thing we did and just wanted to see if anyone else bothered to read the review.</p>

<p>And yes, it's definitely flavored towards Nikon, in the metering test they note the Pentax was the most consistent, but then say the Nikon was the winner. I never got to the end of it. I stopped mid way through, but I'm sure Nikon was the winner.</p>

[matthew miller]

<p>The buffer issue may be due to having distortion or chromatic aberration correction turned on. That definitely limits the burst mode to something small like that. Since they apparently had the high DR mode on, that wouldn't be surprising.</p>

[andrewg_ny]

<p>Nearly all the K-7 images in the "tests" were shot with center-weighted metering rather than segmented. No wonder a bunch of those shots look underexposed. Seems a pretty unfair handicap for ISO/noise testing.</p>

<p>Also didn't bother to read the manual to figure out how to disengage the DR/shadow correction for those tests, or he would have known how to reach ISO 100.</p>

<p>From the mill picture it does appear that only the K-7 has a functional spotmeter.</p>

<p>And while I'm glad to see the K-7 deservedly did pretty well in the color/white balance area, these 'tests' were pretty weakly designed as well.</p>

<p>In a sense it is somewhat fair to test with Nikon's 18-105 as it is a kit lens for the D90, though sold separately it's a >= $300 lens while the 18-55 kit lenses are about half that. Anyway I don't think this was a huge advantage and it certainly wasn't in terms of distortion.</p>

[c_wyatt]

<p>This article is getting bashed all over the net, and rightly so. It's mind-numbingly bad for someone to claim they've done a decent comparison when in two seconds looking at a spec sheet they'd figure out even their basic facts are wrong. I'm no 'fanboy' and I don't mind if people raise actual fact-based issues with Pentax gear, but this is ridiculous. </p>

<p>As I've said elsewhere: WhileI don't think this is deliberate bias (I hope not anyway), I think it's an unconscious bias. I would say that if the reviewer bought what was meant to be a 'semi-pro' Nikon/Canon and they only got four shots before a buffer was full, they would likely look into it. If it 'lagged' as much as they say the K-7 does, they would look into it. But because it's a third-brand body they just take it for granted it's probably rubbish without even checking out the real specs.</p>

<p>Good reply on there Justin, raises all the valid points.</p>

[laur1]

<p>To give them the benefit of the doubt, I'll just call them incompetent.</p>

[paul_loader]

<p>... or to have them acknowledge the test is invalid and to re-test it maybe someone should call them? Presumably they have received emails from folk such as those posting on this thread.<br>

(I'm currently a disillusioned Oly E510 user tempted watching the events of the next few weeks, tempted by the K7 but waiting to see if the rumoured releases bring a better sensor etc., this room is invaluable for the experiences of Justin and others who know what Pentax kit is really like day to day)</p>

[ricardovaste]

<p>Looks like the shoddy article was pulled... so you can all stop the defence now :P</p>

[personalphotos]

<p>Richard, it wasn't a defensive bunch of posts. If you are going to test a camera, any camera, then learn it. Understand the features and what they do. Test the cameras in a consistent manner. There was a comment about lens sharpness and PF in one of the tests but they used different lenses for each body. This is when each brand makes the same focal length Kit lens. Another was the buffer slowness when clearly they were wrong and the Pentax was set to do lens correction after each shot. That significantly slows the write speed as the camera will do extra processing for each shot. Another was claiming the camera can't do ISO 100 when it was set to DR mode.</p>

<p>On that last point, it's a basic control on the camera and if you (the reviewer) can't check that setting, you have no understanding of the features and should not be testing it until you do.</p>

<p>Doing a test like this requires the reviewer to use the camera for several days to know how it works properly. Once it's fully understood, then test them and that goes for each model in the review.</p>

 

<blockquote>

<p>The site now says: Sorry the comparison test that you are looking for has been taken down due to inconsistencies in the review procedure. You may like to look at our individual <a href="http://www.ephotozine.com/article/Pentax-K7-11613">review of the Pentax K7</a></p>

</blockquote>

<p>None of us has any issue with a consistent and competent review. None of us will claim Pentax to be the best or that it does everything right, far from it. All you need to do it read the numerous posts in this forum to realize we can be the brand's harshest critics at times.</p>

<p>As said in my own earlier comments, I shoot Nikon and Pentax. I have no issue with Nikon "winning" the review if it's done fairly and competently. Nikon does lots of things right but so does Pentax. IMO the K-7 sensor is about as good as it gets at sub ISO400 from any APSc brand.</p>

 

[peter_bargh]

<p>Thanks for your comments guys, much appreciated. I run the site where the review appeared and having looked at your comments totally agree - it was a bad review and shouldn't have gone live. As you may now have seen we pulled it.<br /><br />The trouble these days with camera reviews is that you have to not only have read the instruction manual inside out, but know the camera inside out too, and that's every nook and crannie. Camera reviewers get cameras for a short space of time and have to compare all aspects thoroughly.<br /><br />It's quite a challenge to do something as thorough as we wanted in the space of time given to do it. I'm not sticking up for the reviewer - a comparison by shooting in centre weighted on one camera and pattern metering on another is unforgivable, but just highlighting something for you to consider when being critical.<br /><br />If you feel you could do better (well not better, that would be easy - as good as you'd expect to read yourself), then please speak up. We need accurate testers. We're currently advertising for a full time technical editor and they're not proving easy to find.</p>

[personalphotos]

<p>Peter, kudos to you for taking this approach and addressing this forum directly. You are correct, when I got my new D700, I used it for several hours each day, interspersed with reading the manual, for more than a week before making it my primary camera ( I earn my living with a camera). There's just too much packed into a modern DSLR to pick it up and expect to get the best out of it. Considering that the manuals are now 300-500 pages, it can take literally weeks or longer to understand everything these units do.</p>

<p>I am a contributing editor to www.enticingthelight.com and have done a few reviews of gear there myself. We've taken the approach that a review will take at least a week or more of using the gear before putting pen to paper. IMO a head to head review of 3 cameras just can't be done in a day or 2 no matter how hard the reviewer works to be fair and accurate. So if we can't have the gear for 2 weeks and devote at least that much time to testing it, we just don't. So far that's worked.</p>

<p>I assume you're based in the USA and I'm in Canada but I may be of some assistance should you want to discuss. My contact info is on the site above.</p>