K20D vertical banding

I've had my camera back from Park Cameras today, after being sent to Pentax. Apparently, like Steve's mine has had a new mainboard fitted.

Park Cameras have been most helpful, as I'd heard before. I'll be going there for my next purchase.

EXIF shows same internal body serial as before.
Different manufacture date though, 19th Feb.
I've only taken a handful of shots so far, but all are OK so far.
Will update when I have taken more shots

I wonder if it was just a bad batch of mainboards that were fitted or bad batch of cameras full stop..

Most off the components are on the sensor with CMOS that's why they are cheaper and have more noise then CCD

I got mine back today and it also had the whole SR unit replaced. I've not checked the exif to see any differences yet though.

Just noticed on a batch of all photos taken some day recently with K20D something smiliar (but not exactly same) to vert banding shown earlier. Photos were taken in rather warmer than colder temp (10-15 degC ish, nice last Sunday weather in London ), this exists in RAW, tried few mores now, indoor, with different light and same issue happens, tried different mem card, different iso, issue is still there, so rather looks like a perm fault (?).
Below link to some example, it is part of the sky (and these light conditions helped to show the issue) after applyng "equalize" function in gimp, look at left edge - very visible sign of problems, then pattern seems to be rolling across the frame (much wider than few pixels width shown earlier), ignore the dirt spot .
I guess I'll start queuing for a warranty repair now.
http://img106.imageshack.us/img106/9070/imgp3613banding.jpg

I can see lines all the way across, better start queuing..

I've just left my K20D in to be repaired for the banding problem.

I shot 112 photos with it last Thursday, more than half of which had vertical banding - in most of them I can see the banding even at thumbnail size, and all of them at fit to screen (35% for landscape). It was a nice day, about 10 degrees C, some shots were auto, some aperture priority, all using 18-55mm lens, some were very high contrast shots, others low contrast. Some that had banding were shot seconds before or after others without banding. All were JPEG (I only had one 2GB card with me so I switched off RAW, but on a previous day about a quarter of all my shots (RAW+JPEG) had banding - that day temperatures were about zero to 2C - although the previous night, in -3C there had been no banding). I have only shot 278 shots since we bought the K20D, so about a third of the total have had banding.

The retailer (a Pentax pro dealer) said he hadn't heard of the problem before.

(Image link - crop showing banding effect - click link and view full size - I did try adding it here, but it displayed full size, which was a little large... And when I added a pic to the gallery on this forum it didn't display full size, so you couldn't see what the fuss was about - the banding seems to be visible at certain resolutions and not others)

link

Well he has now,

Welcome to the family.

I got my K20 back after Easter (in fact it had been in the institute on the Thursday before Easter, only that Pentax service didn't keep me informed about progress so I didn't even look:blush and now had some time to take a closer look.

The paperwork says that the CCD-Block was replaced. PhotoME also shows the camera as being serviced and a new internal serial number (old one was in the 62000's, new one in the 140000's).
It could be that I'm imagining things (which would be perfectly understandable after more than two weeks camera withdrawal) but it is a huge difference, at least at high ISO. No banding at all, even if I push the 1600ISO shots up by a further 2 stops. I also would say that the noise is lower at high ISO settings (though I would take that with a pinch of salt as I never usually took any high ISO shots and I have to dig out old shots to compare).

Pentax haven't put the new updated firmware on, so I had to do that myself today.

I guess I have to go out and make a few night shots then

I'm a happy chappy now

Prieni

nice to see that your K20 is back in working conditon Prieni.

Sill waiting for mine 2 weeks now.

Tel, I feel with you. In my case it took two weeks and one day for the camera to return. So hopefully it should be back with you in the coming week. Looking at the difference it made I would have gladly waited another two weeks (but that is easily said...).

Prieni

Mine took more than two weeks to come back too. Pentax replaced the sensor and had to wait for parts to arrive. Seems to be perfect now. Went to Kew on Sunday and took a load of shots (mainly macro - Sigma 70-300) and they look stunning. Exposure seems to be more accurate too. The camera came back to me with firmware 1.01 (it had been 1.00) and I've upgraded to 1.03 - and the shake reduction may even have improved a little - although it was pretty good anyway.

Mine is there for a 3 weeks now (with the bank holidays on the way).

Prieni.. Good to see you have your camera back and everything is ok.Wish mine had been that straight forward.Got a brand new K20D now and everythings ok, except Im a bit paranoid and end up pixel peeping..

Tel, have you got yours back yet