Originally posted by kittykat46 The K-7's RAW output is as good as the Canon 50D up to ISO 1600.
The 50D's High ISO jpegs are cleaner, obviously Canon has done better on the JPEG engine.
I use Silkypix PRO for RAW conversion, and anything up to ISO1600 on the K-7 can be developed with low noise and very good detail rendering.
At ISO 3200, the K-7 is visibly noisier than the Canon, but keeps slightly better details. You'd have to crank up the Noise Reduction to get a smooth output, with some loss of details.
At ISO 6400, the Canon is clearly much better than the K-7, though it also suffers from noise by then. The 50D has ISO 12800 extended ISO, which the K-7 doesn't, for obvious reasons.
The K-X simply has a better performing sensor at High ISOs.
I will agree here for jpegs... but for RAW my experience with my 50D is far different from yours.
At any and all ISO RAW my K-7 out details my 50D by huge margins. Its not at all "slightly" better, its much better.
As far as visible ISO noise... at 3200 I gotta say there is about zero difference, but my eye can see the K-7 is pretty damn clean.... at 6400 I will say they are close with Canon slightly taking the lead with less noise but taking a hit to detail. If you are shooting at 12800 on the Canon, you are in dire straights, because jpeg or RAW those images are pretty much garbage. I opened up my extended ISO once.. and never used it again. Huge detail loss, big red/blue noise all over the picture, which made only highly aggressive noise reduction software effective... which made you lose HUGE amounts of detail.
Another thing to take into account here is that if you are comparing in camera noise reduction I suggest you try turning the K-7's off and the 50D's off. The K-7 has very poor in camera noise reduction... I mean its "okay" set at low... but you're better off just turning it off and adjusting it in post, which if you use even a moderate noise reduction cleans up so very well. This actually works in favor of both cameras because Canon did some aggressive in camera stuff too... which usually made the images lose detail.
Now, I am not trying to get into an argument here... but being a former Canon fanboy I used to stick up for the 50D with all my might... it got a bad wrap and unjustly so. Its still a great camera. I just don't think its clearly a better high ISO camera than you do.