As the tired saying goes; if it weren't for bad luck, you wouldn't have any luck at all." Incredible!
Jack ----- Original Message ----- From: "Zos Xavius" <[email protected]> To: "PDML" <[email protected]> Sent: Sunday, October 26, 2014 12:26:31 PM Subject: Pentax Blues Does anyone have a contact with Ricoh America? Since they've changed their domain name I don't have any contacts with Ricoh. I bought a K-5 IIs before the summer to replace my K-5 that was, at the time, both lost and also had serious issues that CRIS never really fixed. Pentax said that they would help me out with repairing it a second time, but then the camera went missing and the only option was to replace it. I bought a refurbished K-5 IIs from KEH right before new prices dropped to what I had paid a month before. If I were to do it all over again, I would have spent the extra $100 and got a new K-5 IIs as well as the 3 year warranty. I bought a refurbished DA17-70 to pair with it and it seemed like an ok combo for the most part. Any softness I was seeing I generally placed the blame on the zoom. I generally shoot at smaller apertures so I often don't see the worst of things and I think the 17-70 is a beautiful, but somewhat flawed lens anyways so its pretty easy to blame. I decided that with a K-5 IIs and a K-3, I could cover a lot of what I need with those two bodies and a DA 20-40 and 55-300, so I took the plunge. $2700 later a K-3/grip/flash combo, 20-40, and WR 55-300 were on their way. Well, turns out that the 20-40 was on backorder so I got the K-3 and 55-300 first. Initial tests indicated that there was something wrong with the alignment of sensor and mount on the k-3. The DA17-70 and 55-300 looked pretty bad. I was visiting NYC so I went to Adorama and found out that they didn't have any more K-3s. They didn't want to take the camera and I didn't want to leave without a working K-3 so I took the display model figuring that lightning wouldn't strike twice. The next day I went to upgrade the firmware and it locked and never finished. I waited almost a half an hour and reluctantly pulled the battery. Its a total brick now. It seemed like it was working ok otherwise beforehand. So then the 20-40 came and now of course I'm going to test the hell out of a $900 top tier lens. On my K-5 IIs I'm getting poor left/right sharpness. Same goes for the 55-300 and 17-70. I had always assumed that the 17-70 just had a slightly weaker side and I probably would have sent it in for servicing if I had something else that I could have used in the meantime. Now I'm not so sure about this camera even. A 50mm at f1.7 doesn't look all that awful on a flat surface, but the newer zooms do. What I couldn't help but notice is that the upper left corner of my images all look kind of soft on the K-5 IIs, so I'm not so sure it is optically good itself! This is especially maddening because part of the problem with my original K-5 was a poorly aligned mount that I asked CRIS to straighten out. They told me I needed to send in a lens to test with. So now I have a k-5 that is at the end of KEH's warranty and a non working k-3. If I service the k-3 the turnaround is going to be 3-4 weeks probably. If I service the K-5 IIs under warranty I won't have a camera. I have a K-7, but after testing with it, I would say that the mount is nowhere near good on that camera, which is to be expected as it has seen a few falls. Adorama told a friend of mine that his K-3 is about 5 weeks away from coming back into stock, so right now the round trip to service looks like the faster option. I'm trying to talk to pentax to help me out since I still have 12-24 I need fixed and I don't think I should be having all these issues with new gear, refurbished or factory fresh. I've probably spent almost $4000 on Pentax in the past 6 months and to spend more to have someone test my gear and realign it is a little upsetting. I'm probably looking at $400 to send the K-5 IIs and 17-70 into Precision if I go that route and if I want the job done right its probably the only way to go. I don't really trust KEH to make the combo any better. I don't think they are an authorized service center for pentax anyways. According to some member of PF I'm just being too picky. Because uniform left/right sharpness is too much to ask from a manufacture I guess. I expect better and haven't had these issues in the past with previous pentax cameras. My K-7 was a very good camera that only developed issues with a great deal of abuse. The K-5 IIs I own has been very much babied in contrast. Part of its my fault. I should have tested the K-5 IIs more from the get go and not assumed that it was a good camera from the start. On the downside that means that the last two pentax bodies I've bought have problems. This 20-40 could indeed be an ok lens, but I'll never know until I have a body I can trust to test it with, This 55-300 might not be all that bad, but I have a feeling I'm just going to send it back and see if another copy is any better. It does have really lovely rendering. Same goes for the 20-40. If I could get a good combo between the two and the two bodies I wouldn't want much more to jam into my bag. I guess I just keep hammering at pentax america to see if they will help me straighten (pun intended) this situation out..... -- 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.
