Originally posted by 8540tomg Lowell,
I have a K10 as well. Do you notice a significant improvement with the K7 over the K10? Clearly you did as you bought one but after a bit of use what is your impression? I'm especially interested in your insights on the K7 and use with manual focus lenses.
Cheers
Tom G
Tom
Interesting question.
First, a disclaimer.
I use the 300F4 almost exclusively at this point in combination with the SMC-F 1.7x AF TC, so I am not really manually focusing. Additionally, I decided that I would get a new body when the shutter on my K10D failed. I opted for the K7 because of the reports of superior metering expecially with older lenses, and felt the K20D would have too many of the same problems as the K10D in this respect. I also decided for $325 the K10D was worth getting fixed, so now I have 3 DSLRs, *istD, K10D, and K7D. From postings you will see that I still use all of them, as they all do different things.
So far, I have only shot about 1/10th the shots with the K7 as my K10D, and have not used all of the lenses on the K7D yet, but here is my initial thinking.
From a metering perspective, the K7D is superior to the K10D, with manual aperture lenses, It is still not perfect, but it is better. Problems still exist in my opinion to fast lenses wide open. This also applies to better accuracy with Sigma long zooms and TC combos, and with my 300F4 and 1.7x AF TC combo, where the K10D needs exposure compensation and the K7D does not appear to need any.
As for focusing, I have not had any issue achieving sharp focus with the MF lenses I have used on the K7D, although I spent quite some time making sure the eyepiece diopter is correct for my vision and eyeglass combo that I use.
I can't really compare to the K10D and manual focusing as I have a diagonal split image in the K10D at the moment, and I don't see changing this any time soon. In fact, despite the metering issues with the K10D I may just make it a MF body or use it in good lighting, and use the K7D for higher ISO applications like wild life, since it excells at this.
Clearly I need to do more testing with the remainder of my lens kit on the K7D, but I am heavily leaning to an AF kit and an MF kit approach, where all my new and high quality zooms plus a few specific lenses to use with the SMC-F 1.7x AF TC go with the K7D and my MF primes go with the K10D. The *istD will still be the preferred for some flash shots and wildlife using flash since it can do TTL flash, with manual aperture lenses (as you saw with my night heron shot a few weeks ago)