Arghhhhh!!!! Goodbye K10D

I claimed for a dish washer against my break-down insurance (bear with me). The offer they made was a machine of equal value, but I argued successfully that it was a stainless steel interior they needed to match, and they did supplying a more expensive replacement.

Try the same argument with the specs. The K10D was the top of the range, etc.

I tend to agree with Andrew, the specs of the K50 match / exceed the K10 by a big margin, I know which I would rather have. Having recently bought one for my daughter, it is a very impressive camera with a bit of weight. (not sure what the contacts for the power zoom would look like otherwise I could tell you, but it works fine with SDM)

I'm not sure how much you'll miss the top plate once you get used to a K50, the bigger downside to me would be the shorter battery life compared to my K5 but cannot remember how it compared to my old K10. (although the AA adapter can help with that).

SRS have a low milage K10 for £129 as well as 2 K20's for £169 -199. You'd probably get £250-275 for the K50 - got mine for £230 off ebay for a mint one with lens and low 640 shutter count (from a retailer they're about £300-330 without lens)).

By all means go back and push for a K5, alloy body, top plate, grip compatible, battery life but I wouldn't be upset with a K50 if thats all they offer - they seem to be replacing the lens and flash gun with no problem and I'm not sure how the excess comes into effect with the K50.

Regards

George

No! I feel for you. I've not hand any accidents with any of my kit, but some close calls. At least they are replacing everything.

You may miss the body shape of the K10D though. I know I do since moving to a K-5 a few years ago.

Exactly why I feel the need to retain the option of a grip, the K10D was chunky enough on it's own but still felt weird without, I've had two grips for the K5, the first one went belly up and the second I bought from HardGravity followed suit, must invest in genuine Pentax in future

Yeah, always had the battery grip on my K10D. Miss that on the K-5. Although the battery grip on the K-5 is not as comfortable as on the K10D. The main reason I have not bought one.

Am I right in thinking that the original extra contact added for the powerzooms is the same contact used by the later SDM lenses? In which case any camera compatible with SDM should be fine for a powerzoom .... ?

I have dropped my K5 now 3 times. it still works as good as original. it dropped twice on to concrete and once on to gravel.
It has some scrape marks on the bottom, but no dents.
when i dropped it the first time, my favorite SMC-F 35-70 lens got damaged. The focusing mechanism wouldn't work anymore. But the camera was ok.

I bought a new F35-70 from Ebay for 60 Bucks. and all is back to normal.

It shows, hoe sturdy and well made the K5 is.

the advantage with the marks and scratches is: I now look like a professional.

Regards, Horst

Just to expand on my earlier post, if the insurance cover is on a 'like-for-like' basis then you need to make it clear what it was that persuaded you to buy the K10D in the first place. If the top LCD and ability to take a grip were topmost in your decision, then the replacement should have both in order to qualify as 'like-for-like'.

As I said earlier, in my case the driver to buy the particular dishwasher I had was (a) it was a Bosch, and (b) it had a stainless steel interior. I couldn't care less about number of programmes, etc. On that basis I 'invited' the insurance company consider what 'like-for-like' meant, and to find me a replacement Bosch with a stainless steel interior, and I didn't care about price or any other feature. If they could find one that was cheaper, but otherwise met my requirement, that would have been fine by me. They replaced it with one that met my specification, which was more expensive than their first offer.

All's well, they've offered me a K3 and a cash settlement based on the cheapest prices they could find online, as far as the K3 and Flash go I think I'll be stumping up the extra and going to SRS, The 16-50 they found on Amazon for £749 but it also comes with £60 worth of Amazon credit* which will go a long way towards a grip, which makes it a no brainer compared to £829 from SRS, especially given that I've had an excess to pay plus increased premiums for the next 2-3 years
*not valid for third party sellers.

@McGregNi
I checked out Dimitrovs Pentax page and according to him the "flagship" DSLRs will support the power zoom via the SDM contacts, but the Entry levels won't.
It must be something to do with the circuitry and the amount of voltage which can be transferred through the contacts

I'm currently working on some Black Friday promotions with Pentax which will mean that we will be significantly cheaper on this lens (as well as others)

As soon as I've sorted pricing, I'll post on here. Like before there will be very limited stocks available, but will offer forum members 'first dibs' probably on Wednesday or Thursday next week.

Yeah but if they've got a K10 for just over a ton. A K5 is nice but not that nice... And a K3's huge files will clog up your hard drive!

that is hard and you have to be ruthless and the eqivalent replacement means new for old and they will just go on spec not top of the range
but it is best to ask for there complaints department and say it is not the top of the range which this is
and it will take you at least a good month if not a little longer
as been there and got the teeshirt

Not when your ruthless, I've got into the habit of deleting the RAW files from stuff I shot years ago, my reasoning is if I've not done anything serious with the image by now I never will.
I delete Jpegs that are beyond all hope too.

Anyway they've coughed up for a new replacement , it would feel "wrong" to buy a used camera and pocket the difference.

Get a k3 you know you want to

And get one of these too. Comfortable, effective and cheap
My auto focus and flash photography is not very good I fear (too many M42s) but the card reads 'www.cordweaver.co.uk'