Originally posted by Wheatfield It's a nice shot, well lit and obviously very heavily and skillfully post processed, but what is it telling you about the capabilities of the camera?
Precisely nothing.
Perhaps you want to rewrite that to say "...what is it telling
me about the capabilities of the camera?".
I'm not someone who thinks the camera makes the image but I believe that I can spot whether an image comes from a camera with fine colour fidelity (Bayer array+ processing), smooth tonal gradation (partly influenced by noise and processing), detail that looks natural rather than artificial (anti-aliasing filter), etc.
Of course you are right that if an image has been heavily post-processed then one cannot be sure where any of the above came from. I didn't suspect the image to be
heavily post processed. Perhaps John can fill us in on the details.
I might be fooling myself but I've yet to see an image from the K-7 that bowls me over because of its ability to effortlessly create a sense of natural beauty like some I've seen from the Sony A900.
EDIT: I realise that the image size, in principle, allows little judgement to be made about the quality of the original and hence by implication about the lens and camera. However, often people use straightforward downsizing methods and I find that many image qualities are still reflected in the downsized versions and that hence downsized versions do not quite have the equalising effect one might expect. That's my impression at least.