Alright, I got one finally. I also got a battery grip. This time I showed up with passport and got the duty free discount of 5%. For both grip and the body I got them for slightly less than $1400 US. If you want to buy one on the net in Japan, you can knock off another 10% or so at
http://www.kakaku.com.
I loaded some pics on my album:
User Photo Gallery - Uploads Posted By Nubi
Today and tomorrow I plan to shoot with my new k-7 like a machine gun. I will post them in the same place tonight or tomorrow.
Here are some highlights that I noticed immediately out of the box:
1) Yes the body is smaller, but not by much compared to K10 or K20. I hope they didn't spent too much of their resources making it smaller because personally the difference in size and weight that I see in K-7 does not add all that much.
2) Ergonomics are good. I think I like the button arrangements. I think that Pentax purposefully made all the buttons that you need during shooting on the right side where your right thumb can reach. What you need during the preview the buttons are on the left side because the chances are your left hand is no longer holding the lens. I think I understand their reasoning for this.
3)LCD screen is bright. LV much more useful. I think that the heat generated by the camera on the sensor can be an issue with mag alloy body. But I think they used plastics where they did to fight the heat problem. The info shown on the screen are also better arranged and easier to see. But it does remind me of Nikon display, sort of.
4)Overall design is certainly different from k10 or k20. Enough said on this already
5)AF - well, as I said earlier, I think that AF is more decisive. It's certainly faster. They lock on convincingly. But when I compare side by side to k20, or even k10, the improvement is not so dramatic. This doesn't bother me however, but I know that this is bug some of you. This is not part of K-7 that I jump up and down, but certainly better than it was before. I haven't tried on AF.C mode yet.
6) Shutter sound: This is a weird one. I can see that quieter shutter noise is desirable for, say, bird shooter and so on, but personally, I love the sound of the shutter sound on my k10 and k20. I will say this however, is that the shutter works more quietly, and the shaking caused by the action of the shutter is much less. I am sure this helps in conjunction with SR.
7) SR: This is again sort of like AF. Kind of hard to tell how much of an improvement there have been. I need to use it more.
8) One funky thing. When I flip the camera up side down, and back, you can feel what feels like a "rattle" inside the camera. The sound is close to what you hear when you do the dust removable. It sounds like a sensor rattling within the slot, or something like that. I got worried, and did the same thing for k10, and there is a bit of that in k10 but not as much as what I feel in k-7. I need to talk to the manufacturer about that.
9) Newly designed flash unit is a good one. If you use this a lot, you will like it better. You can actually use a long lens like 50-135 and not cast a shadow.
10) The new grip is also grand. Especially when you hold it vertical, the grip feels very secure. Very well done on that.
11) I have not used the video yet.
12) One huge problem that this camera has is the fact that it is having to deal with massive amount of expectation. I think that this is a camera that should grow on you the more you use it. So the satisfaction may not come immediate. In this day and age of immediate gratification, this may not sit well with some people. I know that this is a strange thing to say, but when I inspect this camera, I cannot help but think how far ahead k10D was of its time. So much so that I am thinking about getting rid of my k20, but keep my k10.
Hope this helps a bit. Plan to post the pics by k-7 shortly.