Gutted: I dropped my camera and it's broken :(

I really hope not. There's nothing else visible so I'll keep my fingers crossed.

John and Stuart. Thanks for the suggestions but I have now done some further research and am feeling comfortable with ACS. So I will knock off a bit early tomorrow and take the 1 hour drive to leave my baby in their capable hands.

Thanks for the idea. I found the "9 o'clock" and "6 o'clock" screws were loose and the metal ring had sprung away at the bottom.

I slackened the others and gently tightened them all equally. This straightened up the metal ring but the terminals were still not protruding through. Also the "9 o'clock" screw wouldn't tighten, which meant that the thread must be stripped.

Obviously, when it hit the floor, the lens must have 'levered' the mounting plate away from the body.

So I will definitely head off to the repair shop in the next few days.

Canon must be cheaper. I just had a new mount replaced on a Dal 55-300 (The plastic one ) By Johnson's It cost £72.

Well, it's not good news.

I took it to ACS yesterday and it needs a new mirror box and mount. The threads are stripped and the mount is buckled.

Unfortunately they do not have the equipment to set up a pentax mirror box. Canon or Nikon would not be a problem but they don't see many pentaxs. There are 2 ways of looking at that; either there aren't many pentaxs out there or there are loads around but they don't break!

Anyhow, I shall now contact Johnsons and get it sent off to them. As I have to send it away I might as well send it to the Ricoh recommended repairer. It may cost a bit more but at least I know the warranty for the repair will be good and the remainder of the 2 years should not be affected.

I shall also contact my home insurance, which has a £50 excess, and see what they say.

In the meantime some flash gels, diffusers and deflectors I ordered have just arrived in the post and, because I can't play with them, I'm feeling pretty down

With all that ancillary equipment begging to be used, maybe a low cost second body as a spare/backup would be a good idea?

I think you're right to go to JPS. They will have the right equipment. The insurers are your first port of call though, depending on the repair cost they might write it off and you could get a new body.

John, you're absolutely right. Unfortunately the broken camera was meant to be my backup and a nice shiney K3 was to be my main camera.

I just haven't quite got the funds yet

That does really hurt. The best laid plans get easily disrupted sometimes.

Just checked and the house insurance covers both the camera and lens and they have approved me sending it to Johnsons for an estimate.

Although the 12-24 seems to be undamaged they have agreed to get it checked in case there is something wrong internally.

I just wonder what I will do for the next couple of weeks without my camera fix?

Silver lining then

Oh no! Please don't tell me that I have to get that repaired as well

I doubt the insurance will cover that!

Just had a service report back from JPS:

REPLACE MIRROR MECHANISM
CALIBRATE AND ADJUST ELECTRONIC CIRCUIT BOARD
CHECK AND ADJUST FOCUSING
CLEAN CCD

Total £264.

It doesn't indicate any action with regard to the lens, so I assume that it suffered no damage in the fall and is okay

I've forwarded the report to my insurers who shouldn't have any problems with that. Let's just hope they're quick.

Ouch... I hope your camera is Okay, I clicked on the link in your first posting and it came up with my photo's, don't know why that was.

This is very odd, I clicked on the link and one of my photos appeared!!!

Same here - I guess it's because I am still logged into gmail / Google+

That is odd I'm not logged into gmail/google+ but I get 4 photographs of mine when I click on Ralph's first link. I noticed that 3 of them were taken with my Samsung Tab 2 and were of an IT installation at work - I remember taking them to send to someone. I checked my Tab 2 and sure enough the same 4 photographs are there in the gallery app in a folder called Auto Backup. I'd suggest that the auto backup must store your images in the cloud. However I certainly never agreed to it or set it up.
Sure enough I checked the google+ app and auto backup was set to on. Here's the way to disable it

https://support.google.com/plus/answer/1647509?hl=en-GB