I wish you luck David. If you are not seeing a big improvement over your fuji, you must have a problem somewhere.

Fuji s9600 at ISO 800: link

The K-7 should be capable of nice detailed images up to ISO 1250 with a fine-grained noise but none of the destructive smearing and over-processing you can see on the Fuji. If you are shooting jpegs the 'low' NR settings remove the colour noise but leave behind a fine grain on higher ISO images which is film-like and not too unpleasant. Shoot RAW and use Lightroom for even better results and full control.

Yes even at 100% I don't think the difference between the K-5 and d7000 is that significant (and as Mhuni says it seems to vary depending on which bit of the image you zoom in on) and as soon as you've pp'ed and printed, i'm sure it'd be impossible to tell. I don't think anyone buying the d7000 or k-5 will be kicking themselves for not getting the other camera based on iso performance alone.

A few more high ISO K-7 shots, although increasingly these ISOs aren't thought of as 'high' any more
ISO 1250


ISO 1000


ISO 640



To be honest I haven't really needed to go to much higher ISOs than these.

Have you thought about compiling 'slideshow' reports for Youtube?

My plan is to concentrate on street/urban photography a bit more. I keep wasting my time going after landscapes when that's never been particularly rewarding or successful for me.

It's seriously splitting hairs to judge a winner (IMO).

Definitely on my list for Santa! You're just confirming what everyone else who's tried this lens has been saying.

Don't think so Stefan. As I understand it, that would just pick up normal camera shake. The issue is the sensor moving relative to the camera body and lens, rather than the whole camera moving. Go back to Falk Lumo's 'white paper' and check what he says. He has provisionally confirmed that the K-5 doesn't seem to be noticeably affected, based on some of his friend's hands-on testing, btw.

He will have to take it off tripod for that, & use a wide angle lens.

But you've already gone above and beyond, thank you amoringello!

Plus don't forget to let it cool sufficiently