Short lived…….

…….. yes my newly acquired Pentax K-3 mkIII has gone back to WEX after little over three weeks.

When purchased it was advertised was only 1000 activations. After a further 300’ish additional activations the sensor shutter failed.

WEX have been brilliant with helping to sort the issue a replacement is on its way. Hopefully, this issue isn’t a common problem.

Hopefully you've just been unlucky, I've had mine shortly after it was launched and ( fingers x'd ) no issues to date with 6k actuations +

Never heard of that problem with a K3iii before. I'm up to 5K actuations and not had any problems of any sort with the camera (or with previous Pentax DSLRs). Since yours had 1000 actuations when bought, it was presumably sold as used. I wonder sometimes whether low usage used items indicate that it had suffered a knock, drop etc. when with the original owner which hadn't caused visible damage and they moved it on before any internal damage surfaced.

Steve

How very disappointing! Better luck next time!

Though even buying new isn’t a guarantee, when I got my new K50 it was faulty, it had the flappy mirror issue, it went straight back and a new replacement was delivered. This camera worked well for a number of years but then gradually developed the dreaded aperture block failure, grrr.

You can get problems with K1s as well - I have two and both do the same thing. Leave them idle for a few days and, after power up, the first shutter release causes the mirror to go up - and that's it! The shutter does nothing at all and the sensor records what it sees - nothing. When you 'view' the result it is simply a black frame. A second press of the button might release it; it might not. Sometimes turning the camera off and on again won't shift it but (oddly) removing and then replacing the battery will cause the mirror to drop back into place.
Thinking about the OP report at the start of this thread (Also with a K3) reminds me of a similar problem.
I got into a bad habit with my K3ii of holding the half press of the shutter while manually focusing, waiting for the confirming bleep! Eventually (3-4 seconds) it threw terrifying wobblies that sounded like a violent whirring noise. Mike's comment about shutter flap sounds similar. I sent it to John Pye but they could find nothing wrong with it (and they didn't charge me a penny - not even for return postage). After that I was scared to use the thing but I noted what I was doing every time I used it thereafter, which is how I discovered its dislike of someone holding the button half way down for long periods. Click -Whirrrrrr! I never do that now.

I had one of the first K-3iii in the country (I won it.... I don't normally buy so quickly after release) and its been knocked around quite a bit (the chassis is showing through the black paint on the edges and corners) but so far (fingers crossed) it has worked perfectly. The only time it has done something odd is when I have accidentally set some mode or other with the special settings thingy-wotsit which I have never figured out and to be frank, don't need.

Hope the replacement works out great. It is a brilliant camera.

K.