It is noticeable in the Snowdon shot but not gross. It helps if you avoid seascapes!

It's certainly possible to correct the problem in processing, with something like Photoshop or Lightroom, but it's a pain to have to do it each time, and it also introduces some degradation to the image (it's not possible to rotate by arbitrary amounts losslessly).

Nice photos, by the way.

Peter, how visible is the issue with your K10D? On mine it's very obvious on landscape photos featuring the sea. I haven't been able to measure it accurately but it's probably somewhere between 1 and 2 degrees.

Ha, don't I just know it! I tried to put in a higher bid on your camera with 10 seconds to go but neglected to click the Confirm button! I thought it would shoot up by £30-40 in the last few seconds but it didn't, so I was miffed to miss it (and you're probably miffed to sell it a low price).

I would presumably get far less than £130 for my camera, given its tilted viewfinder issue. I have to consider how much extra over the £96 I'd think it worth paying to get a camera which is apparently only a marginal improvement over the K10D. As the owner of both, would you consider the K20D to be a significant enough upgrade?

I have a K10D (or rather, a Samsung GX-10, which for the purposes of this discussion is basically the same thing). I bought it 5 years ago and have hardly used it since I discovered (once the camera was out of warranty!) that the problem I was seeing in landscapes where the horizon was tipped down to the right by a couple of degrees was, in fact, a fault with the camera and not just me being inept. A bit of research has shown that this was in fact a fairly common problem with the K10D, and it seems to be caused by a misaligned mirror box.

Now, I can work around this by actually tilting the camera a little while shooting, if using the viewfinder; or by making sure the base of the camera is horizontal (the sensor seems to line up OK with the body - if I take a shot with a perfectly level camera, the horizon is fine). But this is a bit of a pain and I'd ideally like to do something about it. I've been quoted £96 plus VAT to address the problem. But I'm wondering whether I might just be better off ploughing that money into a replacement camera, maybe off eBay or somewhere, and seeing what I can get for my camera on eBay (with the fault acknowledged, of course!). I could probably pick up a K20D or GX-20 for under £200 and end up with what should, theoretically, be a slightly improved camera. Ideally I'd go for a K5 or K30 but they're a bit outside my budget at present.

What do others think? Is the £96 worth spending? Or is it a known problem which can be fixed at a lower cost, if so where?

I actually have a Pentax M 50mm f1.7 as well as the Ricoh I mentioned, along with a 'RIKENON 1:2 50mm' (from the lens front). I have a Pentax P30N, a Ricoh XR-X and a Ricoh KR10 Super, and my intention is to sell two of them and keep just one film SLR, but I've not decided which yet. What I want to end up with is a small set of kit which has the lowest resale value without losing out in performance terms - I don't imagine there'll be a good market for old film camera stuff for much longer.

Well yes, this is true, of course, but I think it's taken as a given - otherwise what's the purpose of any comparative reviews of equipment?

You say "I'm sure that's the legendary lens these Rikoh armchair glass ball gazers have all been talking about" - but I can't seem to find anything much specific. In this review - http://www.pentaxforums.com/userreviews/showproduct.php?product=504&cat=88 - the guy says "The XR Rikenon has somewhat of a cult status in some circles where it has the reputation for incredible sharpness." Once again, I can't find anything substantive. Does this MTF graph tell you much (I really don't know how to read these things)?

http://www.pbase.com/steephill/image/38667508

Correction to the above - it's not the depth of field scale which has been rubbed off, but the focussing distance scale, which is a little more of a problem but still not insurmountable (the only difficulty is when using the depth of field scale - there's nothing to line it up against).

OK, thanks for the feedback. I suspect if I sold the two I wouldn't get enough to buy an SMC Pentax-A 70-210mm f4, as my Pentax SMC has a minor 'dink' on the barrel which doesn't affect it optically but would certainly reduce the selling price. I'll keep that one and sell the Takumar, and keep my eyes open for a 70-210mm on the cheap.

Thanks for that, most informative. What's the significance of the version number? Is one better than the other? I think it's a pretty early lens, probably from around 1980.

As mentioned in another post, I'm rationalising my older K mount lens collection now I have a Pentax K10D. I have two 80-200mm zooms from the 1980s, one of which I'll keep and the other I'll sell. One is an 'SMC Pentax-M 80mm-200mm 1:4.5', and the other is a 'Takumar Bayonet Zoom 1:4.5 80-200mm'. If one is markedly better than the other, I'd like to keep the better lens, but if there's not much difference, I'll keep the one with the lower resale value. Any thoughts? Thanks in advance.