Very half-hearted effort at Luminous Landscape on K7 review

The review has since been updated:

UPDATE: A number of readers of this review during the first hours online were update about the above, because, as they rightly point out, " this is only the case if you have the lens aberration and distortion correction features turned on ".

Fair enough. When turned off preview is effectively instant. But, I expect that with corrections turned on is the way that most serious photographers will use the camera. And, there are other cameras that have similar capability which do not take as long. A faster processor is likely needed, which I believe would also help autofocus, as seen below.

--
Peter Fang - Pentax user for more than 25 years: K-7 / MZ-S / Z-1 / SFX / LX
My PBase Gallery: http://www.pbase.com/pfang

*isteve said:

Yes, but its no longer dedicated. The joystick on the Canon is one of the few ergonomic features I actually like.

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It's no more nor less dedicated, it's just than "Fn" is now named "Ok". But I get your point, and I conced it would be nice to have a control dedicated to AF point selection. But there's only so much room on the back, and I prefer the smaller size of the K-7.

Pete Fang said:

The review has since been updated:

UPDATE: A number of readers of this review during the first hours online were update about the above, because, as they rightly point out, " this is only the case if you have the lens aberration and distortion correction features turned on ".

Fair enough. When turned off preview is effectively instant. But, I expect that with corrections turned on is the way that most serious photographers will use the camera. And, there are other cameras that have similar capability which do not take as long. A faster processor is likely needed, which I believe would also help autofocus, as seen below.

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Another backhanded piece of praise? He is just digging a deeper hole.

--
Lance B
http://www.pbase.com/lance_b

Why is he only comparing the K7 to other DSLR's? I mean in an earlier review he is smitten with the Panasonic GH-1 and to some extent the Olympus E-P1, but he does not include those in his comparison. Why not? Sure... they aren't DSLR's but does Pentax really expect current Nikon and Canon customers to sell their equipment and start over with the K7? I don't think so.

The USP of this camera for me is the limited series pancake primes. I already have a heavy DSLR with the zoom lens and have no interest in different paradigm. Some of us are interested in buying a 2nd camera to compliment our current DSLR setups. I am intrigued with the MFT cameras. However, they have their limitations too. It seems to me that there are many innovations in the K7 and when married with the limited primes it makes an excellent alternative.

In the end, what we as photographers want in a camera is something that inspires us to create, allows us to accurately document, and performs consistently and reliably. I could care less if it's a DSLR, a MFT, an etch-a-sketch, whatever. Does the K7 with the pancake primes belong in this conversation as an alternative to the MFT movement? It seems Reichmann thinks not.

hammer9 said:

This guy really phoned in the review - don't even understand why he bothered to write it up:
http://www.luminous-landscape.com/reviews/cameras/k7-hands.shtml

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I am a great fan of Michael. He is a fine photgrapher and a great teacher - but he is a professional, and his medium is usually full frame or medium format. For a pocket camera he has a Leica.

He simply does not need a camera like the K7. And when the camera system you use every day costs $30,000 it must be very difficult to get excited about a $1,200 mid-range DSLR. It is also difficult to be objective when you have so many cameras that you can pick the ideal one for any particular task.

To me, this paragraph tells the story:

The first was as I was choosing which camera to take out on a shoot each day (I had four different new cameras to test in a one month period). After a full day of initial familiarization I rarely found myself reaching for the K7 by choice. Not because of any particular failing, but simply because there were features or capabilities of other cameras available that simply were more compelling and which I felt would help me take better images more effectively.

He had 4 cameras to choose from! I can and will only ever be able to own one full DSLR system. Hence for me (and I suspect most other amateur photographers) his most telling comment is this one;

Almost every aspect of the camera is competent, and there are only a few failings.

To me, a camera that is competant in all areas (as he readily concedes the Pentax is) must be my ideal camera. I cannot afford to have a Canon for one job, a Nikon for another or a Sony for yet another.

And give him his due, this is in his concluding paragraph:

In the end, the Pentax is a fine camera and anyone who finds it of interest will likely not be disappointed with its purchase.

I have been disappointed with many purchases in my life, so a comment like that from a pro like Michael I would count as praise indeed!

Michael has better uses of his time than writing reviews of every DSLR that comes along. If I were him I would not have bothered. This review would not have been missed.

Come on Michael, where is that review of the new Mamiya medium format monster for me to drool over?

... I really think that the Pentax' sweet revenge will come early next year when the 645D will totally smoke his precious Leica S2 on all counts (maybe except available modern lenses at the launch time) for a third of the money or so.

I echo the voices of a lot of previous posters, this was a review not worth posting and not for Pentax' sake/pride/fan base but because it really lowers the LL standards.

Radu

Luminous Landscape said:

"The is a well priced, well featured, and competitive DSLR. Just the thing to raise Pentax's profile and sales in the new industry environment..."

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Nick Savoiu said:

"...I don't have a lot to say about the K7's image quality or its overall appeal. It's a competent camera and does a lot of things well and not too many poorly. Image quality is fine..."

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Nick Savoiu said:

"It's a camera that will likely to be found equal to the needs of most photographers looking in this price and performance category."

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Nick Savoiu said:

"It just failed to light my fire."

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I see that as a positive and honest review. Aside from the USP agenda.

Lance B said:

Pete Fang said:

The review has since been updated:

UPDATE: A number of readers of this review during the first hours online were update about the above, because, as they rightly point out, " this is only the case if you have the lens aberration and distortion correction features turned on ".

Fair enough. When turned off preview is effectively instant. But, I expect that with corrections turned on is the way that most serious photographers will use the camera. And, there are other cameras that have similar capability which do not take as long. A faster processor is likely needed, which I believe would also help autofocus, as seen below.

Click to expand...

Another backhanded piece of praise? He is just digging a deeper hole.

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Well, pardon my ignorance, but is there any other DSLR in the market offering similar built-in lens corrections for distortion and abberation? I'd love to be enlightened. I know some compact digicams (Panasonic LX3, for example) have distortion correction but it is just for one non-interchangeable zoom lens. Also the Leica M8 and some Nikon DSLRs (D3, for example) have built-in vignetting correction but this is much easier to process than distortion and CA correction offered by the K-7. Of course I'd love to see Pentax using faster processors in their DSLRs but I think Michael is comparing apple vs orange here.

Peter

--
Peter Fang - Pentax user for more than 25 years: K-7 / MZ-S / Z-1 / SFX / LX
My PBase Gallery: http://www.pbase.com/pfang

Lance

I agree that the K7 is a good tool and a decent compromise, given the lenses some of us have. It works, takes pics, its compact enough. So I agree with you.

I guess Mike@Luminous as a reviewer is looking for a wow product. Its reasonable from their point of view. For someone who wants to buy a new system, its easier to convince them when there is a wow factor. Guess thats what these reviews try to look for.

Thx
-D

--
http://www.flickr.com/photos/debojyoti_dutta/
http://picasaweb.google.com/ddutta

Luminous Landscape jumped the shark some time ago but I remember when it was an almost-daily "must-read" (back in the early days of digital). Now it's trying to stay on the leading edge of the best digital and thus found itself escalated to $30k medium format digital. The Leica M9 is a budget camera by LL standards, so it's not surprising they can't summon up the enthusiasm to put much effort into reviewing a camera like the K7

The only reason affordable cameras like the lower-end Nikons and Canons get mentioned is that Reichmann shoots the high-end cameras of with both those systems.

The reviewer mentions that its a fine product. Just that it doesnt have a wow factor that might sway people from other systems

In tecnology, from what little I know, sometimes people get into a market with something unique that competitors dont have. From that perspective, if K7 had 1/12000 shutter or clean ISO 128K (thats a joke), it would set the product apart.

Right now its a nice mix, a great compromise, good pricing. Nothing wrong at all with it. For pentaxians like me, it would be a nice upgrade (I am waiting a little for a price drop).

I think the review was ok. It wasnt very quantitative, and neither was into pixel peeping. Agree it was subjective but it hovered around my feelings.

Bottom line: I would still buy the K7 once the price is a little lower. Its a great camera for me, given my lenses.

For someone starting out with a system on a low budget, I would recommend a cheap Nikon/Canon body with 35/1.8 (for N) and a 50/1.8 .... Previously I would always recommend a Pentax + FA35 + FA50. For someone who can spend 2K+, it would be a K7 + DA35 + DA55/DA70. For a higher budget, a full frame + 50/1.4 + 85/1.8 + some fast zooms seems good. and so on. I am not married to brands. Want to learn the art using decently priced tools, thats about all

--
http://www.flickr.com/photos/debojyoti_dutta/
http://picasaweb.google.com/ddutta

I dunno. I read the review. I think he missed a couple important points, and an opportunity.

His observations about it not having a unique selling proposition are puzzling to me. I think it says more about the difference in how one views gear depending on how one acquires it than anything else.

The K7's price/performance is to my mind one of its best selling features, but if you got the camera, and a bunch of others for free, even if only on loan, you might not be as sensitive to that.

One of its key features, and one I rarely use, is its weather sealing. I learned to snorkle years ago. I've been swiming for almost as long as I've been walking, which I think made snorkling harder. Learning to breath with my face in the water when all my previous experience said not to was hard. Likewise, taking my camera out in the rain, when all my previous experience says not to, is equally hard. That's one of the reasons I enjoyed the reviewer who left his out in the rain while he sat in the tent and read the instructions. It was refreshing. And not something I'd be likely to do.

That said, weather sealing is still very iimportant to me because I live in a region with highly variable and often unpredictable (or poorly predicted?) weather. It is nice to know that if I do get caught out in the rain, all is not lost.

The opportunity he missed was, I think, a chance to remark on the growing maturity of the market and technology itself. We're seeing fewer and fewer radical innovations and many more gradual incremental improvements, with a focus on ergonomics. The technology is begining to take second place to usability. The quality must be there, just like we're all expected to bathe regularly by the people we come in contact with on a daily basis. But like daily bathing, the technology alone doesn't excite comment. It is just expected.

It is other things, like the fact that you really can operate the camera with one hand most of the time, that make the K7 stand out IMHO.

The other key selling point I think he missed is that Pentax is the only long term 35mm camera maker I'm aware of that has never forced their customer base to buy new lenses by breaking backward compatibility. How it is that the others have managed grab a greater market share despite having done that in the past amazes me.

In short, I think the reviewer has, wittingly or otherwise, slightly lost touch with reality. He said it himself, he had four new cameras to review in the space of a month, and I'd be surprised if he had to pay for them. To be sure, he likely doesn't get to keep them either, but that isn't a situation most of us find ourselves in.

ropen said:

... Pentax' sweet revenge will come early next year when the 645D will totally smoke his precious Leica S2 .

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It'll probably totally smoke Pentax as well... I really don't understand the raison d'etre of the 645D when Pentax is still struggling to keep a tenuos foothold in its core market. The world has changed and Pentax is still looking back.

Mike

Pete Fang said:

Well, pardon my ignorance, but is there any other DSLR in the market offering similar built-in lens corrections for distortion and abberation? I'd love to be enlightened.

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The D5000 & D90 have built-in CA correction that reportedly work with any lens. No idea how much time it takes to run, however.

Lance B said:

Pete Fang said:

The review has since been updated:

UPDATE: A number of readers of this review during the first hours online were update about the above, because, as they rightly point out, " this is only the case if you have the lens aberration and distortion correction features turned on ".

Fair enough. When turned off preview is effectively instant. But, I expect that with corrections turned on is the way that most serious photographers will use the camera. And, there are other cameras that have similar capability which do not take as long. A faster processor is likely needed, which I believe would also help autofocus, as seen below.

Click to expand...

Another backhanded piece of praise? He is just digging a deeper hole.

--
Lance B

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Talk about a grudging correction ... !

It's an incredibly sloppy, lazy review with as prejudicial an introduction on the 'What's New' page as you could imagine ... "Their new K7 is a strong contender, though not as compelling a choice as prospective owners might wish'. What does that MEAN? And he admits he didn't use the lenses he had sufficiently to make any judgement about image quality, while having said elsewhere there was nothing special about the image quality. Huh?

I think he wrote the thing in the bath suffering from jet lag. It's a shame as I quite like that website generally.
--
tim
http://www.pbase.com/timotheus

If I had the following four cars in my garage;

Ferrari, Mercedes s600, Honda Accord, BMW Mini... on a given day, I would never pick Honda ;-)

But arguably, the Honda Accord is the best car among the four.... IF you could only have one car for a reasonable price. It's competent car! ... not great in any particular category. Competent, but not great ;-)

--
.Sam.
K20D - ist* DS - ZX-5 - LX
Photos: http://www.flickr.com/shadzee/

I hope this is not just another "why can't they make an inexpensive FF camera like anyboby else" type of response !

Until we see the specs and the price of that camera I think it's a bit childish to get in panic mode. Unless of course if your mind is already made up regardless ...

Radu

Model Mike said:

ropen said:

... Pentax' sweet revenge will come early next year when the 645D will totally smoke his precious Leica S2 .

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It'll probably totally smoke Pentax as well... I really don't understand the raison d'etre of the 645D when Pentax is still struggling to keep a tenuos foothold in its core market. The world has changed and Pentax is still looking back.

Mike

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Excellent illustration.

.Sam. said:

If I had the following four cars in my garage;

Ferrari, Mercedes s600, Honda Accord, BMW Mini... on a given day, I would never pick Honda ;-)

But arguably, the Honda Accord is the best car among the four.... IF you could only have one car for a reasonable price. It's competent car! ... not great in any particular category. Competent, but not great ;-)

--
.Sam.
K20D - ist* DS - ZX-5 - LX
Photos: http://www.flickr.com/shadzee/

Click to expand...

--
Steve

Any fool can take a picture OF something. Its much harder to take a picture ABOUT something.

After a while when you spend all your life surrounded by fantastic bodies, you get a little jaded.

Here's to the girl next door

--
Steve

Any fool can take a picture OF something. Its much harder to take a picture ABOUT something.