For anyone not overly afflicted by light pollution then it's well worth looking at the night sky from now for the best meteor shower of the year. Viewing conditions are perfect here in ruralmost France. Some real fireballs so far.

That's worrying. Could you post a picture of the sensor marks and also what was the start of the serial number of your camera?

For photographic merit I like 2 the best, although I don't think it's difficult to identify. For difficulty - 3,4 and 6.

Maybe, if the replacements are issued from the same production batch, which I doubt. But I think that this is also a reasonable assumption given that:

The problem is being reported all over the world so logically from different batches.

From the reported serial numbers it seems to affect all from 3800 ish to 3900 ish.

It is affecting the very first cameras purchased but also very recent purchases.


I had a K20D with a serious vertical banding problem. I bought the K20D just before it was discontinued and yet I was informed that Pentax had never come across this problem before mine. What BS. My consolation this time is that they cannot deny my K5 problem.

The K20D banding issues are not long forgotten by me.

Well I heard they have clean K5's in there so it's not that far fetched.

Any recommendations on screens that don't require a visit to Fort Knox with a balaclava?

Judging from this and other forums roughly 50% of cameras are reported affected.

Of these reported, some will be regular dust. However, in the majority of cases of those who have posted pictures, the stains show very similar characteristics and the tightly clustered dots, line of dots or a large black circular stain simply don't look anything like regular dust. So it seems fair that there is a common defect due to a specific problem - and their has been several confirmations that these stains are under the AA filter and therefore permanent.

There may well be those reporting a problem who have confused regular dust with these stains. Not everyone whose camera is clean will have reported that. Affected users are more likely to post than those unaffected.

However, this evidence doesn't statistically correlate with Pentax assertion that only a tiny percentage of cameras is affected. There are users on the other forum who have sent cameras back for replacement and the replacement has also showed the stains. In one incident three consecutive cameras were affected. At a tiny defect rate of 1% this would be a one in a million occurrence. Even at a high defect rate of 10% this is a one in a thousand occurrence. So I conclude the defect rate is not tiny, in fact quite the contrary.

From the snippets so far it would appear that Pentax Japan are busy investigating this issue which suggests that they were unaware of it, which in turn suggests about zero quality control. I think this is a good opportunity for Pentax to turn a quality control fiasco into a customer service triumph.

Pentax have a really great new product. Let's face it, they don't have the best reputation for customer service. When I decided to buy Pentax I first asked around camera shops in SE Kent. I couldn't find any Pentax stockist (which surprised me no end) and several dealers told me that the reason had been the service from Pentax. So if Pentax capitalise by dealing with this openly and fairly then that will demonstrate a clear turnaround in customer service and they will then really have a platform to win customers. The good news is that there are very encouraging initial noises from some Pentax service agents.

The internet is a wonderful thing, real power to the people. Freedom for Tooting.

Walker and Avenue and +2 to the above.