That's an excellent lens, just needs using correctly providing
it's not faulty.... which would be rare.

Mostly M for exposure and AWB as long as the lens plays along.
Some lenses require a proper WB reading from an Expodisc.

There's a very arty farty photographer on ebay (somewhere)
who does really creative pictures of what he's selling using
probably medium format digital. He only shows a small part
of the item he's selling and a lot of it is in strong shadow.
The artwork is usually sepia toned...... will it help sell
his ebay gear....
NO CHANCE YOU CAN'T SEE WHAT YOUR BUYING!

Anyone could be a professional photographer..... just look at
the standard in mini-studios such as D&P shops and dept. stores.
Some of the 100mm macro lenses that they used were on ebay a while
back.... the apertures had all been glued in position at f/8
The professional photographer couldn't be trusted to change them

Wedding photography is purely a craft which can be taught to
anyone. A lot of the studios that had their own LAB attached
used to train the printers to photograph weddings on a Saturday.

It's all just a case of being commercially minded. You don't
need to be an artist and no one will pay for artistry.
If a wine importer wants a picture of his wine bottles
as long as he can read the labels, he will be happy
and pay up

Nearly all top pros are first and foremost good at
marketing or the have the brains to employ someone
who is.

Check that the viewfinders accurate I can't
stand cameras that cut peoples Heads Off!

It's not really a big problem if you know that the camera's
approximately level at 3 bars showing. This kind of level is
never going to be very accurate anyway. If it was you wouldn't
be able to hand hold it. It would move around too much.

Assuming it has an accuracy of 5mm/M for a scene 50M wide
that would be +/- 250mm which may or may not be good enough.

Every photographer should have one of these levels so that you
can level up the tripod head properly link

Hoya are unlikely to be bothered about that They wash their hands of it in a months time and then it's up to Ricoh.

They also need to be careful not to alienate K-5 owners or they will just switch brands.

New lenses are desperately needed before a new camera body. Particularly an Xmm to 400mm

I think the Kr was just an update of the Kx. It was also
a simpler camera.

Any new camera released in the next few months will have been
in development for some time using exactly the same QA procedures
as the K-5

The Guarantee obviously isn't transferable