Pentax recommend that you format the card in the camera that it's to be used in. Please see the instruction manual.

As the lens is the same on all cameras it looks as though it's the item at fault. It may well not be stopping down, so other than clean the contacts, which you've done, there's not a lot else.

Quote for repair?

Upload away, let's see some of your images!

Your camera takes an SD card, so you'd need an adapter to use a smaller version. I don't see why it wouldn't work, but it seems a difficult way to do things when SD cards cost so little?

Meadow images have been neglected I think. They make for very attractive subjects and you've posted a good example here.

Gorgeous images!

The mood of these is great, I've looked at them a few times now and enjoyed them.

Roscoe, please see the OP for the time scale of this thread.

The Ricoh GR and similar cameras avoid this by having sliding shutters in the design. That solves the problem, although it strikes me that any pressure on the shutters when closed would probably cause severe damage.

The lens cap issue is the same on the Olympus XZ-1, a similar camera to the MX-1, and it's avoided there by having a push on lens cap. Unfortunately that tends to fall off, so ends up not being used at all.

If it's perceived as a problem, probably ditching the lens cap would be the answer, as long as the MX-1 is kept in a suitable case to protect the lens. It is recessed, so many cases would be OK.

With a design that demands a motorised extending lens I'm not finding it easy to think of a solution that doesn't also mean added bulk.

At first, we probably all forget to remove the lens cap and the camera warns us and turns off rather than causing damage. That seems very sensible to me. Eventually I remembered and always take the cap off before switching on.

The design failure is to have a clip on lens cap, which if it were push on instead would simply pop off the lens like the X90 one did.