As I've been in transition getting my Posterous blog up and running, I didn't have a chance to post these initial test files that I shot with the K-r from my hotel room around the 20th of October in NYC just before PDN PhotoPlus Expo.

These samples were shot with one of my first K-r production units and my favorite FA 31mm lens. To keep the framing consistent from image to image, I used a tripod and shot in DNG and simply saved the files to jpgs for posting here, and made no adjustments to the images. To keep my depth of field consistent, all images were shot at f/5.6. Despite the fact that I typically would not use walls for any test samples, I found this composition and lighting in the back alley next to my hotel quite suitable to check out the image quality of the new K-r sensor. There's a nice tonal range from dark shadows to highlights and there are many textures or areas to see how the increased ISO affects them. In particular, you might want to keep an eye on the window frame area towards the left side of each image. I also kept the test to our out-of box specs for Sensitivity, from ISO 200 to 12800.

Although I don't have identical image files from the K-x to compare with these K-r shots, my initial impression is that the new sesnor is delivering even better IQ which is no small feat since the K-x was pretty good to start with.