I was here a long time ago before taking a bit of a photographic hiatus, so it seemed only right to re-introduce myself. After a long association with film-era Pentaxes I entered the digital era with a K30 and then the K50. My K30 is starting to show the first signs of succumbing to the aperture block problem so when I recently found a very good local deal on a K5 with fewer than 3,000 shutter clicks I jumped at it. It's still early days for me with the K5 but it's a gem of a camera and as good as I think my K50 is, the K5 is a class above.

I think Pentax produce fine camera's and they do everything that I need from a DSLR. It's nice to make everyone's acquaintance.

Cheers Mac - you're right, at least I know the history of this one as I've had it from new.

I agree it's a great lens, in fact I'm a big fan of the humble 50mm. They seem to be much-maligned in some circles

The aperture ring on my copy of this lens is a bit sticky when shifting between each f stop. It doesn't need to be forced but it just doesn't move as smoothly as my other lenses.

I'm assuming it's probably just got some dirt and other muck etc in there which is affecting it. I'm inclined to take it in and have it cleaned up, or could this turn out to be prohibitively expensive? Should I just buy a replacement?

I've got an LX (a later model) and a couple of Super A's that haven't seen as much use over the last 5 years or so as they should have done.

While I intend to correct that this year, I was wondering if it's worth having them CLA'd and generally checked over. None of them has ever been serviced or needed repairing since I bought them (I bought the LX and one of the Super A's new) but none of them have been abused or treated harshly either, or indeed used excessively.

Should I just shoot a test roll with each one and only get them looked at if something appears wrong or goes wrong down the track?