K7 Tips and Tricks


The K7 manual is too big for many of us. Too much information, and hence any sharing on how you use certain settings and why and how they help in bringing out magnificient photos will be great. It can take too long to learn alone; but with the help of the passionate community, we could learn a lot faster, and enjoy the camera a lot more! Especially now, that it is close to Chinese New Year, and Valentine. Good time to share your experience!
 

I think we can have a k7 sticky thread if necessary? Fengwei can help us with this perhaps.
 

Very simple.

Take your K-7, Go out and shoot

Too much theory will get people nowhere
 

My best tip.....

Learn to use the Green Button. :D
 

The Green Button in K-7 sounds to me like an emergency button - to bring the shoot mode to auto; if things don't turn out right with the shoot setting. Not sure I am right. But reading it sounded like this.

Anyone with HDR experience? Why do people want to use HDR? Shooting 3 photos in jpeg and all superimposed into one. Unsure of this technique.
 

The Green Button in K-7 sounds to me like an emergency button - to bring the shoot mode to auto; if things don't turn out right with the shoot setting. Not sure I am right. But reading it sounded like this.

Anyone with HDR experience? Why do people want to use HDR? Shooting 3 photos in jpeg and all superimposed into one. Unsure of this technique.

The green button is not really an emergency button, more like a shortcut button. If you're shooting in M mode, you're probably going to refer to the camera's built-in meter to set your exposure, at least now and then. You could crank both aperture and shutter speed till the meter tells you the exposure is right, or you can just press the green button and voila! Saves you lots of e-dial cranking. I set my K20D such that I set aperture, and green button will bring me to the right shutter speed.

HDR can be useful in scenes with high dynamic range, beyond the sensor's range. If you shoot just one single frame, you'll have to choose to either overexpose the highlights and have washed out areas, or underexpose the shadows and have dark patches with little details. Or if the scene's dynamic range is really large, you may have neither shadow nor highlight details. By shooting multiple frames of different exposures, you can capture the details in both the highlight and shadow areas, then combine them using a HDR software, and get a final picture where everything retains a nice level of details and contrast. Done tastefully, it can kind of recreate the scene you saw with your own eyes which the DSLR sensor is unable to capture (your eyes have much higher dynamic range than the sensor).
 

The Green Button in K-7 sounds to me like an emergency button - to bring the shoot mode to auto; if things don't turn out right with the shoot setting. Not sure I am right. But reading it sounded like this.

Anyone with HDR experience? Why do people want to use HDR? Shooting 3 photos in jpeg and all superimposed into one. Unsure of this technique.

I think of the Green Button more of a "reset to default" button. It's really useful to have.

If you look around, there's a lot of beautiful done HDR pictures around. Here's some basic info about the technique:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/High_dynamic_range_imaging
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tone_mapping
 

The Green Button in K-7 sounds to me like an emergency button - to bring the shoot mode to auto; if things don't turn out right with the shoot setting. Not sure I am right. But reading it sounded like this.

Anyone with HDR experience? Why do people want to use HDR? Shooting 3 photos in jpeg and all superimposed into one. Unsure of this technique.

OIC, i think you are correct with the Green button, i used it to help me determine the scene if i am in a hurry, it auto set and using the Optical preview to give a rough estimation. I also did went to see the pentaxforum, and found this http://www.pentaxforums.com/forums/pentax-beginners-corner-q/60081-usage-green-button.html
However, i don't think all the functions stated are the relevant to the K-7 as some applies to K10/20.

Erm, HDR i have not try, no tripod. >_<. Think it works like the Exposure Bracketing, only that it merge it for you instead of having to Post Processing yourself.
Here's a link which show the what it will look like http://www.pentaxforums.com/forums/pentax-dslr-discussion/66323-k-7-camera-hdr.html
 

hmm but you can in-camera edit a photo to become HDR ? when you take jpegs and review them press the down button and you can set all the art filters and there is also an HDR feature ! Dont know if the result are the same but if it is so why not just edit the shot in-cam rather than have to take 3 shots ?
 

hmm but you can in-camera edit a photo to become HDR ? when you take jpegs and review them press the down button and you can set all the art filters and there is also an HDR feature ! Dont know if the result are the same but if it is so why not just edit the shot in-cam rather than have to take 3 shots ?

both k-7 and k-x have built in HDR that takes 3 consecutive shots which does have different exposures,

the reason behind is to widen the DR to capture shadows and highlights to effectively as much detail that cannot be taken from a single shot.
 

Last edited:
hmm but you can in-camera edit a photo to become HDR ? when you take jpegs and review them press the down button and you can set all the art filters and there is also an HDR feature ! Dont know if the result are the same but if it is so why not just edit the shot in-cam rather than have to take 3 shots ?

I don't have a K-7 or K-x, so correct me if I'm wrong....

Seems like for the HDR feature in the art filters, it's only to create a pseudo HDR effect, and will not give you the ability to capture more dynamic range than the sensor's physical range. It's probably a bit like playing with shadows and highlights in photoshop. To really get more dynamic range, you'll still have to use the HDR capture mode, and let the camera take three bracketed shots.
 

I don't have a K-7 or K-x, so correct me if I'm wrong....

Seems like for the HDR feature in the art filters, it's only to create a pseudo HDR effect, and will not give you the ability to capture more dynamic range than the sensor's physical range. It's probably a bit like playing with shadows and highlights in photoshop. To really get more dynamic range, you'll still have to use the HDR capture mode, and let the camera take three bracketed shots.
I would have thought so. Which is why I also never quite use it. ha. I thk taking raw and using Photomatic would give better results.
 

any idea how to check if SR is working? i keep getting blur pictures on my k7;( even just abit it will have blur !! and what mode should a beginner like me use except the green mode?:dunno:
 

any idea how to check if SR is working? i keep getting blur pictures on my k7;( even just abit it will have blur !! and what mode should a beginner like me use except the green mode?:dunno:

There's a SR logo in the viewfinder that will light up. It may take a second or two while focusing to appear.

Another way to check is to use live view and max zoom. Turn SR on and off, you should see the difference in shakiness.
 

OK so i tested it and i think it does work but its still shaky to a certain extent:eek: oh well just need a steady hand... also when i make aperture priority and make the aperture big like f3.5 (biggest for my lens) the camera sometimes still overexpose my shot ;( any tips :dunno:
 

if indoor n wide open i'll -0.3 to -0.7 Exposure compensation on ctr-weight metering to give a better approximation of the scene's lighting..
 

OK so i tested it and i think it does work but its still shaky to a certain extent:eek: oh well just need a steady hand... also when i make aperture priority and make the aperture big like f3.5 (biggest for my lens) the camera sometimes still overexpose my shot ;( any tips :dunno:

EV compensation works, but I don't recommend using it until you understand metering.
You should try to understand the metering modes and what it is trying to do, and why it is not giving you the exposure you are expecting.
Post some pictures so we can tell you how to get it correct.
 

Ok I think im getting the hang of correctly exposing my shots ;) but still getting blur shots even when SR is on ... Is it normal to get blur shots at speeds of about 1/25 to 1/50 ? I can feel the sr in LV but when I take long exposures like 10 secs I cant feel anything when I move the camera ... Anything to be worried about ?