RiceHigh's Pentax Blog: Endless K-5 Issues.. :-o

Wednesday, July 20, 2011

Endless K-5 Issues.. :-o

Someone has done an experiment recently and found out the possible root cause of the K-5 mirror flopping issue:-

http://forums.dpreview.com/forums/readflat.asp?forum=1036&thread=38904425

It is concluded that it is a design issue, i.e., problem may happen for freshly charged batteries with higher voltage. Do note that original batteries are used in the test.

Next, yet another K-5 user has reported that the e-dial of his K-5 has stopped working, just like some K-r users encountered before:-

http://forums.dpreview.com/forums/readflat.asp?forum=1036&thread=38937756

And then, a new K-5 user has had his K-5 AF malfunctioned only in 5 days and his unit now behaves in an erratic way, see his recently recorded video:-

(Above: Shockwave Flash File; URL: http://www.56.com/u94/v_NjE2MTM5ODc.html)

via http://forum.xitek.com/showthread.php?threadid=889568
(in Simplified Chinese, Google machine translation to English here)

The serial number of his K-5 unit begins with 403, which is amongst quite a new batch of the production. But still.. The user has made such a joke himself, the 403 s/n is just an unlucky number from the beginning, as when you visit a web page, returning an error code of 403 is simply not a good thing, as it just means "Forbidden"! :-o

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Ying · 712 weeks ago

I have to agree that Pentax QC has certainly suffered under Hoya's rule. The relentless chase for profitability meant short cuts in QC control/ design robustness etc.

I myself have expereinced some alarmingly drop in QC in recent gears - my first copy of DA* 60-250 will not zoom to 250mm! The zoom ring is stuck past 200. The 2nd copy has started to devvelop SDM seizure symptoms.

HOWEVER, after said all that. If you pick a particular brand/ model of DSLR, you will find issues being reports. Remember the various issues suffered by Canon/ Nikon models?

I'm not saying Pentax should be content because the competitors are just as bad, but they are not alone in this.

Let us hope a new management style and corporate culture from Ricoh will bring back some of that lost quality standard.

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masloff · 712 weeks ago

well...every camera has flaws :)

it`s either you keep worrying about any possible issue that might happen to your DSLR. or you fcuk it, and just shoot.

call is yours :)

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frank · 712 weeks ago

my friends canon 5d died only after a year or so while my pentax gear is still going at full speed and I shoot more than she does. Her camera cost like 3000 and and mine only a fraction of that. I figure the canon should have lasted a very long time since it is top of the line. So really all cameras have issues and there is QC problems everywhere even with Nikon the d7000 also has spots on the sensor as I have seen on flickr forums.

1 reply · active less than 1 minute ago

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Toomas Kadarpik · 711 weeks ago

5D1 had mechanical mirror problem as well, this is nothing new on earth. It is of course nice to see problems database here but there are many many positive things as well.

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caveat emptor · 712 weeks ago

It's a bit sad that we have increasingly complex products, which get less and less real-life testing before their market launch. Every manufacturer is pressed to release new ones regularly and the consumer is de facto a beta tester. This is an increasing problem with all complicated goods - cars, PCs, cameras, etc. If an expensive product has issues, it's even more annoying, but that's the "terror" of the market nowadays. The least risk occurs when buying an older "mature" product, but then again most of us will be tempted by the latest bells and whistles...

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Hector · 712 weeks ago

What is the meaning of your announcement, Rice? Who said that the gear is perpeum mobile? Since there is warrantee, let they follow the procedure. It is easy...

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Michael A. · 712 weeks ago

That's why WARRANTY period comes with a product. All modern manufacturing is aimed for profit, meet payrolls and R&D. All have some issues, zero new about that....

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Sachiko · 712 weeks ago

But this really is unusual for a Japanese product. I cannot remember another product in recent memory that had this much stream of problems one after another. As a Japanese photographer, I am terribly embarrassed. There maybe some serious blood baths at Pentax headquarter in Tokyo.

2 replies · active 711 weeks ago