Yes, absolutely! There's a huge amount of features and control sophistication even on the K7 from 4 years ago - it'll keep me happy for a good while yet. I agree also with what Pentaxophile said just after your quoted comment - a good number more, and a wider spread, of cross-type AF sensors would be very welcome.

It sounds like you are having trouble with a selection firstly. One tool that is useful is the 'Magic Wand' (looks like a fireworks sparkler) - it will automatically select areas of same colour and brightness as where you first click - the trick is after the first click then use a right-click and choose 'similar' from the context menu. This should then grab all the same tones you're needing.

For tricky extractions then plug-ins are best - try Topaz ReMask .....
http://www.topazlabs.com/remask/

Nigel

2nd that - those little extra controls are what makes the K7 stand out from the competition IMO, and having them there, apart from the obvious convenience and directness of control, can actually act as a mental prompt to try something different!

Thanks Snappy the little thing was very obliging and I saw the tree adding some extra interest.

Thanks also David for for the kind words, and I understand your point about the 2nd shot - probably a closer view would be better - I was stuck on a small bridge with just the 135mm though, and thought the water and the far distance OOF area gave some context. There is a lot going though

If the RAW video option offered a quality and editing control advantage, it could be good for a range of users I suppose. I use Vegas Movie Studio Platinum (the 'non-pro' option), and its a tremendously powerful and flexible editor. But I find myself wishing the colour correction, exposure and contrast-type adjustments looked better - on the K7 files these edits have the feel of working on a small JPEG I find - not a lot of latitude and depth to the changes you make.

I find it is important to set up the camera custom image settings & white valance accurately before recording video - its better to get it right in-camera as I have not found the software adjustments to be that great, despite the Sony Vegas programme having a great range of controls and fine adjustment options. I wonder if video RAW would improve the quality of these corrections in software ?

Does anyone know if a RAW format is likely to be able to be read and worked on in a standard editor like Vegas Platinum?

4th is great - the background complements the flower better than in the others I feel, and there's a lovely glow to the orange tones

This is really not my thing at all, but I don't think Andy Rouse has been through here for a while, so I saw the opening

Had the old 1970's Tamron Adaptal 135mm on the K7. Just a couple of grabs while the kids were running around, using catch-in-focus. I'm not planning a lot of this sort of thing, but i'm always looking to improve, so all C & C will be much appreciated!














Thanks for checking them out, Nigel

Its true that I feel a lot of the difference is to with the 'process mindset'. But there are some practical issues as well. For example, in P mode, when the camera is switched off and on again ,then you end up back with the defaults - your dial inputs are not remembered.

In Av / Tv modes after switching on again, your setting will be remembered. I know this is important during an extended landscape shoot, when I might be quickly moving around, maybe with the camera still on the tripod, and in Remote Control mode I don't want to disturb anything whilst moving, or fire the shutter by mistake - so the best approach is to turn off the camer for the moving. There are 'memory' items in the menus that allow you to specify exactly what settings will be retained (eg ISO, drive mode, Exposure & flash compensation for example).

There's no point in this scenario of having the aperture jump back to f4.0 when I'm just going to crank it on to f11 straight away.

But, yes, the importance of this stuff to me is about the mental approach and 'priority' of a particular shooting situation, and the most efficient way to focus on that.

This is all well beyond me, but I'm not a pro videographer! So clearly this is not for the average user. But I agree it would add to the attration of the brand and the DSLR to those serious film-makers that could gain from it.

If it didn't add much to the cost and the RAW video could be separated out (I guess by a menu item) for those that want it, then why not - great idea. So long as it was still possible by default to view and copy standard compressed video files like now for the more casual user.

OK, so how would you play or edit this 'Raw' video? Would there need to be special decoding software? The .avi / mpeg etc are playable on a wide range of devices (such as my Smart TV directly from a USB stick). This RAW format you refer to surely would create additional complexities for viewing, and would the conversion not be very resource hungry? (I can't wait - PDCU Video Converter )