18-55mm Lens currently under offer.

I recently bought a Pentax K5 kit from SRS. Thus my old Pentax K7 and the new kit lens from the K5 are surplus to my requirements, and I have decided to put them up for sale.


Used Pentax K7 Body

My Pentax K7 has only seen light use and PhotoME reports under 3000 actuations. However, as I have used this a lot outdoors, the camera has picked up a few scuffs (see link below for pictures).

One thing I should mention is that it has had its sensor replaced by Pentax UK last August. In April the camera picked up what looked like dust on the sensor that could not be cleaned off. The only solution Pentax could offer was a sensor replacement (ouch that was not a cheap repair).

I am looking for £380 + postage for the camera. It comes with all the standard accessories.




More information and high resolution images of the camera can be viewed at: link


New Pentax DA 18-55mm f/3.5-5.6 AL WR Lens

This is the Pentax DA 18-55mm f/3.5-5.6 AL WR kit lens I received when I bought my new K5 last month. It is brand new and has never been used, I have only just unwrapped it enough to take the pictures for this sale.

Please note this is the weather sealed version of this lens with the metal mount and comes with the lens hood.

I am looking for £45 + postage for the lens.




More information and high resolution images of the lens can be viewed at: link


Payment by bank transfer or Paypal. Postage in the UK will be by Royal Mail Special Delivery.

I have seen the following two repairers mentioned on these forums in the past, maybe you can give them a call and see if they can supply parts:

http://www.asahiphoto.co.uk/
http://harrowtechnical.co.uk/

I think one difference between PEF and DNG is that in DNG the camera stores a colour matrix data to inform the RAW convertor how the colours in the RAW file should be interpreted to match the manufacturers intention. Thus a good RAW converter that was produced before a camera release can use this information for the "unknown" camera and still do a good job with the colours. This data might consume a bit of space compared to PEF.

With my Pentax K7 I shoot DNG which are typically 11 Mbytes in the camera. I then use Lightroom to import these into my computer and I get Lightroom to convert them to DNG again on import. The DNG file stored on the hard disk is normally compressed even further, in the example above it may occupy 10 Mbytes on the hard disk. The non-realtime processing algorithms in the PC can do a better job with the data than the camera can.

Note:
- With the Pentax K10D & K20D the DNG files are not compressed.
- With the Pentax K7 & F5 the DNG files are compressed.

The noticeable variability in the file sizes shows they are compressed.



Paul

You may be suffering from a sensor fault that seems to occur in some Pentax K20D/Samsung GX20 cameras. At low temperatures pictures can suffer from lines, magenta shifts and posterisation.

This happened with my Samsung GX20 camera. At temperatures below 10C I intermittently suffered from the above, and below freezing the camera was essentially useless.

In order to persuade Samsung I had a fault, and to characterise when it would occur, I produced some web pages describing what I had discovered. You may want to see if my problems have any relation to what you see with your own camera. If so, then it is a fault and needs Pentax to repair it. Hopefully my investigations can help you to describe the exact nature of your problem so that they can then replicate it and thus do something about it.

link

As an aside, when I sent my Samsung camera in Samsung were no longer able to fix it. So they gave me a refund and I managed to buy one of those £235 Pentax K7 that appeared on EBay last year. It is very comfortable in sub-zero conditions.

Paul

I bought a Canon RFS60-E3 release. It was much cheaper than the Pentax equivalent at the time I bought it.

When I bought my first DSLR, a second hand Pentax DS, I put in the supplied Alkaline batteries but it died after 6 shots. So I put in a set of high-capacity NiMH batteries and went out. The camera died after 10 shots. At that point I thought I had bought a dud and felt much the way you do now. However I tried a third set of old batteries and it went for 100s of shots on them. Good batteries were the key in my case. It is now 4 years later and I am still using that camera to produce better prints than I was ever able to produce with my LX and Cibachrome.

So give it a little time, you have bought a great camera. And that 55-300mm lens is excellent.

When I bought my Samsung GX-20 (Pentax K20D clone) it arrived with the sensor covered in dust spots. Since the camera was only recently released at that time I doubt I got a returned camera.

I tried the camera dust shake mechanism but that did not help. I then used a rocket blower but a lot of dust remained. Finally I used an artist's brush I have especially for sensor cleaning. Two swipes of that cleared all of the spots. I have not had any dust problems with that camera since.

Of course, if convenient, it may be easier to just return the camera back to the shop you bought it from and get them to clean it.

For your information, my sensor cleaning armoury is:

1. Use any camera anti-dust feature on power up (in later cameras it really seems to help stop dust building up in the first place).

2. Use a Giotto's rocket blower to blow the dust off.

3. Use a quality brush to swipe the dust off. Many will recommend the Artic Butterfly or its peers. Being a cheapskate, I just bought an quality 1.5cm artists' brush, washed it to remove any coatings, let it dry very thoroughly. I then charge it with air from the rocket blower before use and a swipe of the sensor normally does the job.

4. Use the Pentax O-ICK cleaner to remove anything else glued to the sensor. Surprisingly effective.


However in reality it is normally only my old Pentax DS that needs anything like steps 3 or 4, and that is a rare event despite lots of lens changing in mountain blizzards. So I suspect once you get your current problem sorted it won't be a big deal going forward.

My brother is an architect and is very happy with a Sigma 10-20mm for taking internal and external pictures of his work. He told me he had no issues with distortion with his lens.

I have a Pentax 12-24mm lens. However I do have not used it much as I tend to prefer stitching panoramas for pictures needing a wide field of view. However I got this lens in a clearance sale for £350 minus the February Pentax rebate, At that price I could not pass on it. It can produce excellent results.

No SDM problems on DA* 16-50, two DA* 50-135 and a DA* 60-250.

I must be one of the unlucky ones - nothing to grumble about. Admittedly none of the above lenses has been used much - I prefer to carry Ltds.