This sort of thought has occurred to other PDML-er's several times before, and usually a few of us will chime in and say we've had A: Good/B: Bad experiences with Pentax gear. In my case, I've only ever had to send a Pentax camera back for repair once, and that was my MZ-S, which refused to turn on. A CLA fixed that. I have a small collection going back to an early Spotmatic, and most still work well. For lenses, I've never had one malfunction. For flashes, ditto - although I've only had three altogether. That said, my *ist-D got soaked in Venice last month, and for a while wouldn't show the type of image I was taking correctly (RAW/TIFF/***), although it was otherwise functioning well. Before then, it began refusing to magnify the image on the LCD, so I suppose I should complain about that...but it is 7 years old. I don't baby my cameras, but on the other hand I've never used them to the same extent as you do - I'm still only on 11300 exposures on the *ist-D. Occasionally, I will take a lot of pictures in a comparatively short space of time, e.g. when on holiday, and so far Pentax gear has not failed me. Maybe you've just been unlucky....
John Coyle Brisbane, Australia -----Original Message----- From: [email protected] [mailto:[email protected]] On Behalf Of Larry Colen Sent: Tuesday, 6 December 2011 9:33 AM To: Pentax-Discuss List Subject: K-5 is shipped off to CRIS Jerry at CRIS, who I talked to on Thursday, was out sick on Friday, finally talked to a technician who said that it sounded like my K-5 has a bad power board. CRIS doesn't have one in stock, but Pentax does, so in theory they should be able to get it back to me in about two weeks. Mind you, I've got a bunch of folks coming over to play with cameras on the 17th, and it would be really nice to have a working K-5, but that's not looking too likely. This prompted me to review my experience with Pentax gear: My AF 540 has been in the shop about three times, with at least a broken hot shoe latch. It also refuses to stay in manual mode, and has some other problems that John F says aren't typical of his 540, so maybe mine is broken, and it's not just a bad design. My K100 had something in the viewfinder delaminate, making it a bit hard to see through. Walt's willing to put up with it, so it's his problem. The shutter button on my K-x has me nervous. I can't really describe what's wrong, and it seems to mostly work. If it were under warranty I'd send it in to have it looked at. My K20 had a hard life. It was dropped twice, but when it came back from repair after the first drop, there was something wrong with it, that they never were able to repair, and ended up just sending me a new one after a couple of months. It also never performed well in low light. Other people have claimed to have much better luck in low light with their K20s than I had with mine, so either I was more demanding, or there was something wrong with it. My gear does see a lot more use than most people's. I always have at least one camera with me, and the shooting style that works for me involves taking a lot of shots until I feel I've got the shot perfectly, so my cameras see a lot more use, and to be honest abuse than most. But, apart from a couple of stupid accidents with the K20, nothing egregious. But, I am beginning to wonder if Pentax quality is really up to par? Or, if it's a reality of the modern age that it isn't economically feasible to spend the extra on quality for gear that'll be "obsolete" in a few years anyways. Especially, since most people probably shoot hundreds, or thousands, of frames a year, rather than thousands a month. -- Larry Colen [email protected] (from dos4est) -- 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. -- 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.
