Help required

A friend in work bought a K30 (stormtrooper) on my recommendation for her daughter, she loves it
However Rebecca, the daughter, rang me the other day and was worried that all her recent photos were dark.
Did some rudimentary troubleshooting over the phone and everything seemed in order so it was dropped into work today for me to have a look.
Diagnosis ...
All lenses, including SDM, will stop down to the minimum aperture, regardless of what is displayed on the rear screen, on every shot but if I put on an old lens with an aperture ring the lens then stops down to whatever the aperture ring is set at.

Can anyone help?

The symptons described sound like the apperture motor has died, i have read a few instances on various forums of this happening with the K30.

There are some basics that others will no doubt direct you to, to confirm that you haven't manually set a low exposure compensation override somehow.

Typically the green button is configured to auto set you exposure settings for you. This can be a good place to start.

If none of these settings helps, then yes, as above, there is a known fault (not officially announced by Pentax - ie haven't taken responsibility for with a free fix etc) whereby the motor that sets the lens aperture fails. In this case the camera can't set the lens aperture from the camera body, so you get all sorts of random dark or light frames as the camera fails to adjust the lens. As you say, using a manual aperture ring lens, and then settings the exposure settings yourself, works fine.

These cameras would be fine for extension tube macro work, or any manual lens use, but you lose the auto part of the camera in modes where the camera needs to be able to adjust the lens aperture. The solution is an actual hardware fix, where it needs to be returned for service and the part swapped out. Given the age of the cameras now, it's highly likely that all are out of warranty periods, so there will no doubt be costs.

That's the bit where I think pentax/ricoh should come to the party. This would have been a major embarrassment had they all failed at once early on, but because they've failed progressively over a longer period of time, it's gone relatively un noticed.

The fix does work though, in that mine has been running fine for many years afterwards. It's a very capable camera and I haven't seen anything that's likely to produce dramatically better picture quality since, without jumping to the higher class of Pentax camera, such as the K-3 line. Good luck!

Exposure compensation checked, green button pressed and factory default reset performed to no avail
I suppose the number of shots over time will differ with each user and so the problem will materialise at different times for all users. However it would have been nice if Pentax had taken responsibility and recalled.

Damn right. It's a faulty part that is highly like to fail over time.
I would have thought Pentax would be more proactive in supporting what customers they do have.

Steve. If it is a known fault then remember you have 6 years in which to claim in England. 5 years in Scotland. I don't know if the "BARRY" is in Wales or someones name?????????????
CHEERS Vic.