Tontos' new K7!

[Tonto]

Happy Birthday to me! Pushed the button on one just waiting on delivery!.
Got with Sigma 17-70 2.8-4.5 ,Silk 630 tripod and have an Eye-fi X2 pro SD card to throw in when it gets here......damn like waiting for xmas morning! (actually Birthday morning hehe

[Kym]

Enjoy!

[tim71]

have fun, you will love it. Did you end up getting a 50-200mm zoom as well?

[Tonto]

Well spotted!, 50-200 went for a tad too much and I messed up the bidding - will either grab a DAL 55-300 or use my super zoom olympus for the long stuff.
There are always other auctions.
Man the wait is killing me!!!

[reaction]

How about the 60-250mm F4 ED (IF) SDM? Duno how much it's going for now...

[Tonto]

I'm pretty sure its not in my sub $300 budget!

[Tonto]

Anyway had new camera for two days now - it goes with me everywhere!
Here are a few of my impressions.
So small! Its only slightly bigger in the body than my Olympus superzoom!
Great not having to worry about a bag when it starts to rain - I just look for photo opportunities!
I stick out from the crowd - even walking into a camera store they ask questions!
The bright red 'PENTAX' on the neck strap makes sure no one confuses it for a Canikon!
The low light performance is awesome! Onboard flash is underated and AWB is fantastic!
The menus are dead easy to get thru - I love two control dials!
Battery! I leave the camera on and ready just turning off at night and still on full charge!
I don't think I will ever need battery grip.
I am still getting to grips with things, first day off today so having a photo day out hopefully post some first pics.

[Meumerke]

Happy Birthday Tonto.

[Kym]

Glad you like it.

Re: The battery, it shows full for a long time but when it drops off it happens quickly, esp when using live view (which I do for landscapes, night and so forth).

It goes for about 2-3 hours per full charge. As it goes to standby when not shooting it means a full charge lets me go for a day of wildlife / bush etc.

[Charbuque]

Hi, Tonto, I got a K-7 on Tuesday - first outing for me will be tomorrow. I have to admit I'm still trying to work the whole thing out - it's a bit of a step up from my Olympus point and shoot. Still, give me a couple of years and I'll get there

It's not a bad size, is it - even so I have ordered a 40mm pancake so I can take it out more often.

How's the tripod?

[Kym]

Best advice?

1. Read the manual !!
2. Try not to do too much at once.
3. Start Auto
4. Then maybe Av

[Tonto]

Haha I done plenty last shooting. MF-TAV-AV-Fill Flash-Live view-Macro-Burst , all good been in Pmode most of the time adjusting shutter or aperture to suit and then hitting green button to reset. First day I was over exposing then I found my metering wasn't set up properly 1st time round. A ok after that.

[Tonto]

Woo hoo, discovered M mode today, I'm loving it! I was abit daunted by it but handles everything perfectly! I love how the exposure level changes as you change aperture/shutter and iso.
So much for starting Auto eh? lol I always was a fan of scene modes on the superzoom and never liked auto.
Yay! Day off tommorrow! Off the the city to take some photos!

[Kym]

You can cheat! Use the green button to get the exposure as if auto. then adjust from there.
Plus the exposure is shown in the viewfinder

[Tonto]

Nice tip Kym, yeah I'm loving the green button.

Now.....had an absolutely wicked day today. Filled up 7gb of jpegs!
I'm lazy as so willbe a while before I post some but had an absolute ball with the new K7!
Was in P mode all day. Adjusted shutter or aperture to suit for the shot.
Actually did some birding on a budget with the seagulls about the place with some ok BIF shots! Abit of closeup stuff/wide and long. The 17-70 is just a great zoom range for me. Was a tad short at times but not in a way I would change the lens for or give up the wide angle.
Purchased a miniHDMI cable so I could view my shots easy on my TV. Its amazing how much better a photo can look than on the camera LCD or even the smaller screen on a laptop - I think I may need to budget for an iMac next year!
Next big shoot will be night time with my tripod around Circular Quay and Darling Harbour, can't wait!

[Tonto]

Another lens purchased! Not the long lens - well not yet - but scored a
Pentax SMC M 50mm 1.2 off E-Bay last night so can't wait to give that a whirl

[Kym]

7gb of JPEGs

Slow down and go raw - more work but much more control of the PP/WB etc

[Tonto]

Will go raw at some stage, prob more for serious shoots and low light stuff. For walkaround I trust the penax excellent WB. Also jpeg works best for me as my photos do an auto download to my network harddrive (via eyefi) so automatically viewable around the house.

[Tonto]

Will go raw at some stage, prob more for serious shoots and low light stuff. For walkaround I trust the penax excellent WB. Also jpeg works best for me as my photos do an auto download to my network harddrive (via eyefi) so automatically viewable around the house.

[Tonto]

Hmmm, lens hasn't arrived ...yet. So still keen to get going with that.

I did a number of long exposures the other day but had alot of noise despite being on ISO 200. After that day I found out I had highlight correction on which is proberly what was wrong doh! Also why I couldn't set my camera to ISO 100. Oh well this is how we learn. May do a relook at settings with my manual on hand.

Found a cool tip for the K7 (may work on other pentax aswell), If you depress the lens release it alows you to do a quasi "quickshift" manual focus. Apparently this works best if you don't map AF to the shutter button. I am using MF alot letting me get nice sharp images usually zooming in with the LV. May also think about an enlarger eye piece.

Also been very happy with WR being caught in a few downpours on my way to the bus stop. Its great not having to worry about the camera and keep shooting photos! I don't have a WR lens (Sigma 17-70) but I'm careful not to extend it while it is wet/raining and dry off at earliest opportunity- seems to be fine. Also only cost me $300 - had it been the price of a 18-250 I may have been more protective. The 50-200 WR I missed getting the other day is haunting me though.

On FL I have found I notice 70mm is actually pretty small a difference than 50mm so if I had my time again I might get a Tamron 17-50 2.8.
The difference is much more pronounced at the wide end which would keep me from considering a Tamron 28-75. I did a FL map of the shots I have been taking which was inconclusive. A spike of photos at 17mm and 70mm which tells me 70mm is probably not long enough (mostly bird shots) and alot of shots done at 17mm were for the 2.8 in a low light setting. Apart from those two a even spread across the range.
I also locked my FL at 40mm for a while to get a sense of that framing and I really enjoyed it! It allowed a fair amount of bokah aswell so I may have to keep looking at this, a small DA 40 would be great in the pocket when I don't want to draw attention to myself .

Anyways this week is the arrival of a new network router which means I can finally get my network drive back online and organise my photos- after this I MAY even post some

Thanks for reading this stream of conciousness!