Where to get my *Ist D (and lenses) Serviced/ Setup

Hi folks

Ok for a while now I've noticed that my *ist D has focusing issues in some situations - the camera appears to lock on fine, then when looking at the images afterwards I seem to have lost a bit of sharpness at the point of focus (but have sharpness in other places)

I found the Focus test sheet on another forum, printed it out and ran a quick test - and saw that with either of my Sigma EX lenses it seems to be consistently front focusing.

Although I'm looking to upgrade to a K10D very soon I will still want to keep the D as my spare body so it's worth me spending a few quid to make sure it's in tip top condition.

Can anyone recommend some places I can get the camera checked over (it was new a few years back - £1200 body only...) since it's not been checked since new and has shot 50,000 or more images. I'd want to have the camera given a *looking over* to see that it's all well, as well as having the focusing checked and tuned if necessary


Any suggestions?

Just a point or two...

From what I've heard the *ist-D was designed to focus at the hyperfocal point automatically... and I've often wondered how it manages to do this as it'd have to know exactly how much to move the focus mechanism for each lens.

Of course, all Pentax lenses have a lens-ID which is communicated to the body - but if you inspect the file with the Pentax Browser (which shows the lens model from the EXIF data), then the third party lenses are often wrongly labelled...

I had this issue with a few Tokina ATX lenses I had from the Z1 which never seemed to give a clear image when compared with the results I obtained from film.

Whether this is the problem, I don't know, but it may be worth bearing in mind

(The K10D does seem more accurate at focus though, and hopefully they've dropped the hyperfocal focus function.)

That said, I'm sure others who have Sigma gear will be able to shed some more light

Matt

Personally I would use one of the Pentax approved repair centres.

With a camera body of such value I would'nt trust anyone else.

Pentax at Slough will give it a service for fifty quid or so. The Americans call this a CLA - clean, lubricate and adjust.

They will then guarantee it for, I think, six months.

Obviously if they find a serious fault, the charge may be higher, but it doesn't sound as though anything is too seriously wrong, except for the brand of lenses being used!

G

I always thought it was only supposed to do that if it couldn't lock focus?

I don't have a D so not sure though.

I would have thought to set hyperfocal distance all it would need would be for the lens to report focal length and current focus distance. I'm pretty sure the Pentax lenses report focus distance since the auto-program mode on my MZ-7 would select macro program only when the lens was focused closer than a certain point.

Cheers George - but I couldn't find the Pentax 24-70 f2.8 for £200 and 70-200 f2.8 for under £600....

I'm confident that it *shouldn't* be a lens issue - in my mind with autofocus the camera doesn't know what lens is on it - all it does is move the lens until it's sensors say that the image is sharp - so I would think it's an issue of the CCD and focus sensors not being properly aligned (I won't pretend the camera hasn't had some rough handling at some points in it's life)

I'll have to give Pentax at Slough a shout and see what they say - although it might then be an issue of having to wait until I've bought my K10D before it goes off