I did that yesterday. I doubt that the seller will offer a partial refund. I could open a dispute procedure for a full refund but I still lose on the postage, so I figure that the probable best option will be to pass it on to someone who will put it to good use, but it depends on worth.

I had a punt on one of these on ebay the other day, it came with an ME and an M40 f2.8. So what I paid for it depends on how much I can get for the pancake.

The 85 has a sticky aperture, the blades are slow. However, on camera it operates reasonably well. I think it might struggle at some smaller apertures but at wider apertures it seems to work largely fine. It would be used mostly at the wider end anyway. Optically everything seems just fine, cosmetically there is a little brassing and one small scratch on the underside but overall in good nick. It definitely needs a good service but it is very usable in the meantime.

I haven't decided what to do with it yet. Options are to return to sender (as the fault wasn't described), sell it on with the sticky blades or have it fixed and sell it. I bought it out of curiosity really, as while there is a fair bit of discussion I haven't found a great deal of images. A couple of people have done comparisons with the FA77, but test charts and whatnot. I'm only interested in how the images look, not the statistics. I'll see how I like it versus the 77, but I can only keep one lens and it would be hard to part with the 77. So after satisfying my curiosity my prefernce would be to find a decent home for what seems quite a rare lens and from initial results, a rather nice one. I'm not interested in making a profit but I do want to cover my costs so if anyone has an idea of the value of this lens in its current condition it would be a help in deciding what to do. Thanks.

I bought a JJC RM-E7 remote from ebay for a fiver inc delivery. Works fine on the K5 and the Q.

I don't care how good the camera or the lens is, a photo of a deer with its hooves cut off should be consigned to the cyberdustbin.

Finger didn't tap enough, D7000

That's my point, Pentax needs to compete too. The quirky individual market is not the one that matters for a profitable future. Get the core business sound and then muck around, not vice versa.

Absolutely. Nikon reckon that is a game changer. It will appeal to so many advanced amateurs. Let's hope Pentax are next in line for that sensor and the Kwhatever can trump it as the K5 trumped the D700. I would be certainly tempted with something like that and I would like Pentax to provide it. The D800 looks good too. We have just lost one of the finest photographers to have graced this site to Nikon as the gap to the 645D is ridiculous. I can understand that, these cameras will certainly tempt other Pentaxians if Pentax doesn't get its finger out.

Let's hope they can take a further step back and come up with a clear vision and product strategy for the marketing department to work with. I believe they might well do that too, as long as Ricoh gets its core business back in better shape.

If you go for high prices then your product will be reviewed against rivals in the same price bracket. That's why the Q was poorly reviewed on launch, because it couldn't punch that far above it's weight. It would have fared rather better against its genuine rivals, it could have wiped the floor with them. That's fine for boutique products attracting the minuscule majority with far more money than sense but not for a mass market manufacturer which Pentax has to be.

Good point on not being able to raise prices, that's why market research should be used to get it right in the first place. But Pentax just did, massively, on a lot of lenses. The Yanks aren't impressed. Listen to us Pentax, don't tell us we don't understand, we ARE the market.

Pentax seem to have found the ability to come up with technically class leading products. Class leading management skills are the only thing required now.

The Q would always have been desirable had they marketed it at the right price and thought about how much it cost to make. I reckon the second generation Q has (sensibly) been redesigned as a cheaper construction simply to increase the margins since Pentax have realised the hard way that there are ceiling prices regardless of quirkiness.

Most people can manage without a K01. Sales may have picked up a bit but you can't run a business with left field sleeper products. Full marks for innovation and trying something different, bottom of the class for business sense.