The other night, a friend was trying to get some shots with his new D7000 at an after hours dance. Helping him out I got a chance to play with it a bit and to compare the two. Without my being able to RTFM the D7000 was at a severe disadvantage performance wise.
The first thing that you notice between the two is the difference in heft. The D7000 is a lot lighter, in comparison the K-5 feels like a solidly built professional camera. Since it was dark, and people don't like a light being shined in their face when dancing, we turned off the autofocus assist lights. The K-5 with 31/1.8 autofocused a lot better in that light than did the D7000 with a 50/1.4. The lighting was very uneven so rather than manual, I was shooting in TAv mode, in order to get the best ISO I could. The D7000 doesn't have TAv mode. I could not figure out how to select a custom white point for setting color balance on the D7000. With the 50/1.4 the D7000 does not have VR/SR/IS. With many of the UI buttons on the left side of the back, almost every function of the D7000 requires both hands on the camera. I couldn't find the autofocus lockout, and that made the lowlight work a bit more difficult. Apart from some quick chimping, I haven't had a chance to look at any of the actual photos from either camera, and I realize that is what really matters. I also understand that so much of the usability of a system depends on familiarity. I hope to get together with Charles sometime in the future and get a chance to learn his camera better. In the mean time, despite the obvious caveats, I'm pleased to note that for me the K-5 seems to be the much better camera. I expect that there are many use profiles where the D7000 would work a lot better. For example, any time I'd need to use a speedlight. Anyways, it was very interesting getting the chance to compare the two. -- Larry Colen [email protected] sent from i4est -- PDML Pentax-Discuss Mail List [email protected] http://pdml.net/mailman/listinfo/pdml_pdml.net to UNSUBSCRIBE from the PDML, please visit the link directly above and follow the directions.
