K7 poor image quality

will

Addressed from planet tharg!

Hello
My K7 was brand new and shipped into London Camera exchange from France as Pentax UK was out of stock. The K7 and 18-55 lens was shrink sealed together but the 50-200 lens was supplied seperately althought the box was not shrunk wrapped it looked brand new. The camera had the early 1.0 firmware which I have upgraded to 1.1 which I believe is latest level.
QUESTION
Is there any advantage in changing sharpness settings in camera. How do sharpness adjustments via bar graph differ from the Fine Sharpness 1 or 2 also available, and can they be used together?
Regards Dave

I use +1 sharpness in camera. The reason is that some sharpening of DSLR images in needed and fotoLibra does not accept any sharpening in Photoshop. They do however accept some modest sharpening in camera.

If the people who buy images require this, then it seems to me that there's something worth taking note of.

Certainly bridge cameras already use more aggressive sharpening, so you might find +2 sharpness more like what you are used to. Worth a try anyway!

Hi John,

I'm not sure this comment is exactly fair, the 9600 & its predecessor the 9500 were highly thought of "prosumer" models as mentioned here in a couple of reviews, I nearly bought one myself after much research...

http://www.dpreview.com/reviews/fujifilms9000/page15.asp

http://www.trustedreviews.com/digital-cameras/review/2007/01/31/Fujifilm-FinePix...


The lenses that these cameras had often outperform the standard kit lenses supplied with DSLRs (not sure about the WR though) which has resulted in initial disappointment for quite a few owners moving on to DSLRs - me included until I upgraded to the Sigma 17-70. I'm not saying this is the case here but it's certainly worth considering.

Simon

I'm going to stick with the comment though, because I did actually own the Fuji S602 Pro, then the S7000 and finally the S9600. Of these three the S7000 was excellent.

The S9600 was nowhere near as good and actually quite disappointing.

I can only report what I find.

Fair enough John, I'm not going to argue with experience, I've see some great shots from them though :

Simon

I think it's fairly obvious that the OP doesn't appreciate the need to do post-processing. Until he does, he's not going to get the best from his camera.

And this is the problem with the pictures posted by Dougf8, which can serve only to reinforce the OP's view that the camera is not much good.

What the OP needs to see is what the camera is capable of when everything is done properly. Sadly I don't have a K7 so can't oblige.

And Doug, lighten up. My post was in response to your over-sensitive reply to somebody else.

By the way, note that JR sharpens in-camera only because of the requirements of Fotolibre. Normally, the best advice is to leave all adjustments at zero, and do what is required on your computer.

Finally, the "photo" in photography means light. You have to know what you are doing to produce good pictures in poor light.

G

Got to say that I have nothing but praise for the image quality coming out of my K-7. There are other various threads that are kicking about at the moment about using RAW and the merits there-of, but I also have to agree with George that I find making use of post-processing an absolutely essential part of my DSLR photography.

There are some examples that I've recently uploaded to my Flickr - Southwold that show the kind of image quality than can/should be expected.

That being said, I would be expecting more than reasonable quality out of my K-7 using jpegs and the very good kit lens if that is what I'd chosen to use.

George,

I see I should not have a K-7, not have a WR kit lens, and I shouldn't have done and posted, a kit lens comparison on the K-7. All these things seem to make my contribution and knowledge void.

I bow to your better knowledge of the K-7, its settings and the WR kit lens.

I'm not sure what kind of altered reality exists on board HMS Sociopath at 2am, that makes you think your posts are welcome, helpful or light hearted but I'm sure if you bottled and sold it, you'd make a fortune.

When I read your posts, you just come across as pompous, intolerant, patronising and disparaging. A real community stalwart.

Personal attacks definitely cross the line, so let's just cool off now.

Getting back to the OP's problems. Do you have SR switched on & are you waiting for the hand to light up in the viewfinder indicating the SR is locked & ready??? Are you also waiting for the focus confirmation light to light?? The hexagon in the bottom of the viewfinder.

It's been a long time since I used the kit lens & I don't have the k-7 however coming from a bridge camera to a DSLR is a huge difference in photography, I jumped to Pentax k100d from a Fuji s602 & also had the same issues you have.

The kit lens for a start will not focus as close to an object as the lens does on the Fuji's, this could be why some of your shots are not sharp. when I first bought my k100d I was also dissapointed with my images not being sharp, but once I got to grips with my new toy the difference was night & day

It takes a little time to get used to a DSLR & their differences to a bridge, but it is worth it.

Also the Pentax kit lens is one of the best kit lenses out there, the k-7 is also an excellent camera as are most of the Pentax bodies within their limitations.

Thanks for advice and support, its nice to have help from most of you and not the silly points scoring that appears to be take place on this forum. I thought it was a place to exchange ideas and assist each other not treat new comers as idiots. Not everyone has been like that and I have taken all sensible advice from many on the forum, thanks to those who have been so understanding.
I have changed very little camera settings from when I was first disappointed with my K7. In fact after thinking the VIBRANT setting improved the clarity of the images I have gone back to the default BRIGHT setting with AWB and + 2 sharpening. After binning around 500 of the K7's early images its now producing the out of camera photos I expect from a top quality camera. They were terrible with the same settings before. No amount of Photoshop editing made them acceptable.
So why now is the camera producing such excellent results, could it be that sensors don’t perform properly when brand new? My Fuji's S9600 and S602 were also a disappointment to start with but with no in camera changes making any difference they both improved with use.
I have to say that my K7 is now and excellent camera, now I can get down to taking photo's and enjoying my hobby.
A final thank you for all of your support and sensible suggestions.
David

I'm glad you've got there. Perhaps it's just a question of getting to grips with how to get the best out of a new camera? If it has followed the same pattern as before maybe the learning curve has something to do with it?

I found the S602 to be very good, despite being only around 3MP (6MP if you believe Fuji's claims!)it produced superb macro shots and that made me realise for the first time that digital was getting there.

The S9600 was not so good, despite its 9MP...IMHO at least.

It would be noice if you could post some of your newer images from the K7 so that we can see how it's going. Have fun!