It does sound rather like the SDM contacts or if it isn't those something to do with the SDM circuitry in the camera.

Pleased to see some more and that I wasn't the only one with a picture. All in all it's a pretty rare event seeing a comet and an opportunity not to be missed if at all possible. For mine I only had to go out of the back door, no graveyards or hill tops!
Thought it strange the comet didn't get a mention on The Sky At Night.

O dear, there's always another day, but not many!
Catch a falling star and put it in your pocket...

Anyone else had a go at taking a photo of Comet Neowise?

I've never used either, but isn't the Pentax one renowned for SDM failures? Which is the main reason I resisted buying one!

I don't reckon he/she was really serious about joining in the first place given the tone and content of the posts, then not forgetting the username. He'll be quite content until his M4/3rds packs up and discussion on that doesn't go down too well here with it being non Pentax related. Why not talk about his/her Pentax collection? I guess we'll now never know what he was comparing it to, he/she brought that discussion to an abrupt end! All the best to him/her anyhow.

The main issue with those is that Samsung admitted defeat and killed its camera system off several years ago.

Pentax as a separate camera company hasn't existed since Pentax sold the camera division to Hoya c.2007. The remaining company continues as Pentax Medical.

As to Ricoh, it was always their intention to keep the Pentax brand for the top end DSLRs and the Ricoh brand for pocket compacts. Pentax cameras are now Ricoh and it is they who determine the road map for their products, with the Pentax name just being a brand.

Is that the Q you're thinking of?

To me the odd thing is that rather than fix it they continued to bring out further products that had the same issue. You could have forgive them if, for instance, the K-30 was known to have the issue, hence the K-50 had been introduced to rectify that. But later models introduced continued to have the issue.
What I don't know and I doubt many do, is what percentage of these have failed. People don't flood camera forums with posts saying how wonderful their camera aperture block has been! It's something they take for granted.