Well yes, I'd agree that a recall might be too extreme.

The thing is, from what I've read, the knee-jerk and rather contemptible reaction seems to have been to deny the existence of the problem.

It's all too common - I expect the vast majority of us have experienced the standard "fob-off" response from organisations from which we request some information.

It's not that I'm entirely unsympathetic - service departments must generally be deluged by George's nitwits, so I can understand them needing a first line of defence, if you like, beyond which people only get if they're a little bit knowledgeable and determined.

But you'd think Pentax would have one or two people that lurked (at least!) on forums, and were intelligent enough to distinguish between a minor and a major problem, and publish some decent quality information sharpish in either case.

As it is, the fob-off type response is simply not credible, and undermines confidence.

Exactly, and if Pentax are too stupid to realise that any obfuscation is going to hit them in their wallet, they deserve to lose out - much though it pains me to say it.

I suspect that the reality, though, is that the majority of those buying a K5 would look for dust first, before going through all the hassle of packing, sending, and being without the camera for weeks.

Counterproductive for whom?

I'm very much with Gwyn on this one - I think if there's a manufacturing fault, you're completely entitled to a replacement. Not only will there always be that niggle, but it will affect the resale value too, as others have said.

Entirely reasonable, and exactly what I would do.

I don't think any other approach will get the message across to a manufacturer that puts out poorly QCed stock.

Well I salute those that put so much more effort into the job than I can be bothered to. I thought my solution was labour-intensive!

I know that I'd cross my own insanity threshold if I had to position each frame separately, and/or indeed clone the dust off every negative.



For the record, I couldn't afford the Nikon either, but that's what credit cards are for, right?

As I've said:

The pics in the OP's link are not the originals. They're heavily cropped.

For instance, here are some other crops.

I have no idea if they're the original sizes either, but my memory of the brief glimpse I got of them the other day is that they showed a good deal more of the background.

Well you seem to have the technique, but...

... ewwwwww

I'm finding this thread a little surprising, I have to say. Not to deny anyone the right to hold or express their opinion, and here's mine.

On this forum we have endless pictures that evoke some of the most pollyanna-esque responses you could imagine (in-focus shots are so rare, it would appear, that 'nice sharp shot' is becoming the 'constructive' comment in vogue).

But as soon as someone dares to take some pics of the Royals, out come the knives.

We can have goofy kid after goofy kid, attractive only to the doting parent in semi-darkness, but let the Beeb publish some perfectly nice pictures of a really nice-looking couple, and people seem to relish doing a veritable Simon Cowell on it.

I would be dead chuffed were I able to capture such natural expressions, that somehow communicated something about the people as a couple, which I think these photos achieve.

Couple that with the clear objective of the 'tog, namely to create populist appeal without descending too far from the toffee-nosed to the chavvy, and I think the skill is plain to see.

All this carping about lack of some technical whatnot is missing the point, I think.

Gawd, am I channeling George?

The one I saw was full length of the couple, with a lot of the room behind them visible. So this one is still quite heavily cropped.

Possibly the fact that the pictures as published at that link are heavily cropped, and consequently rather out of context.

I haven't seen them anywhere online yet, but on the TV news tonight, the uncropped versions didn't suffer, IMO, from these composition issues, although I only got a very brief look.

The relatively formal one has a lot more in-context background, and the informal one more of the room, also giving more of the context.

I suspect they're only a couple out of a much more extensive series, chosen for the populist appeal of the expressions, rather than technical perfection. I expect they'll choose other ones for the wall at the Palace.

I actually like them both - especially in the un (or less)-cropped version.

Composition be damned, if you can get expressions as good as that. Particularly the informal one, has the potential to be something of an iconic look, one where a touch of overexposure and imperfect background will pale into insignificance.

This analysis does assume, though, that the duds are randomly distributed in the total population.

It would be possible to see this effect if one popular retailer happened to sell a batch of cameras, *all* (or a very high percentage) of which were duds.

You'd get a few people buying from that retailer, discovering the fault, and exchanging for another from the same batch, possibly several times if the batch was large and the turnaround time was quick. This would result in the loud negative publicity we're hearing.

So it's not impossible for it still to be true that out of the whole population of cameras, only a small percentage is affected.

That said, it does seem considerably more widespread than either the K20 banding problem, or the 16-50 problems.

I may have said before, that it's no bad thing IMO, that Pentax owners are becoming more strident in their complaints when there's a significant QA issue.

Canon and Nikon are plenty big enough to absorb even serious QA-fails as nothing more than a mosquito bite.

Pentax isn't.