The Pentax K-7 has an unprecedented number of sharpness settings. Initially, there were 18 settings but version 1.02 of the K-7 firmware adds another 9 settings. The way one chooses the setting is by selecting one of nine steps along a particular scale. There are 3 scales now: Sharpness, Fine Sharpness and Fine Sharpness 2, each of these affecting how pixels are created from the sensor data. As usual, none of these settings apply to PEF or DNG files.

Differences between adjacent steps of the same scale are sublte but the difference from one to the other of a scale is very obvious. Differences between scales show up in fine details and along sharp edges. The Sharpness scale applies the strongest sharpening and therefore shows the most artifacts near its maximum. The Fine Sharpness scale emphasizes finer details, leading to less artifacts but to images that are overall less sharp. The new Fine Sharpness 2 scale tries to walk the fine line between the two. In the crops below, keep look closely at the edges for the X, for example.

The Interactive images below illustrate how each scale renders details. Images are 100% crops from pictures of a porcupine hugging a calculator, to see sharpening effects on both sharp edges and fine details. No real porcupines were harmed in the production of these images. Click on the labels below to show the crop for a specific scale and level.