Leaning pic's with the K10D

Thanks for contributing, Rob. It suggests that my reluctance to send my *istD for repair may be justified.

I received my K10D back from warranty service for the second time yesterday, in this instance it had been sent to Japan for service. The service report simply read "camera repaired by Pentax Japan", nothing further.

On inspection it appears that the camera has been re-calibrated such that the position of the sensor now matches the tilt of the finder thereby remedying one problem but creating another. Since the sensor is now no longer square relative to the base of the camera use of leveling devices on the camera's hot shoe or on tripods or heads will result in tilt of the image.

I can't say I'm impressed.

I'm not impressed either, Rob. Thanks for reporting back - I'm still following this topic here and elsewhere.

After looking at all my sunset pictures I performed a more accurate test and found my camera does lean as well.

I bought my camera of ebay and the guarantee is with the seller. They have agreed to just take the camera back and give me a knew one.

I hope the know one will not have the same problems. Does anyone know how to export the camera settings?

Also, maybe we should make this thread stick as it is quite an important issue. I thought it was me not holding the camera right at first and to be honest I did not really notice it until I saw the 20 or so horizons shots that all had the same lean.

Most people might go running around trying to blame/replace their tripods etc..

Out of interest, what is the angle of tilt?

It's in the order of a half degree, I have measured it but not accurately as yet but it's pretty obvious in the finder when the camera is on a flat surface and the subject is parallel to base of the camera. It used to be as good as perfect.

Cheers,

I just received a new camera from my supplier on ebay. The firmware is version 1.00 and the new camera also has a lean.

It is quite frustrating. Sending the camera back cost me and I don't want to send it back again being so close to Christmas.

I guess I will have to ask for another one after christmas.

I must say that i to had a leaning to the right problem, but when i put my camera onto a tripod and made sure all was level and took some pics of a window frame, all was fine. So i then did the same thing hand holding and found the pics were leaning to the right. So i then made sure that while taking a pic the camera remained in the same place even after pic was taken, no leaning so i must now assume that the problem was me not the camera. I had never noticed the problem on my DL2 but as the K10D is a heavier camera i would say that it needs to be held more stable.

it doesn't matter where the fault lay.
the important thing is to make the most of a bad situation.
I heard there is a leaning tower of pizza somewhere that needs to be straightened up....
so go photograph that, and I'm sure everything will come out level.
Bring me back some of that pizza ok?