Try contacting Asahi Photo link for a quote, they may be able to help at a better price, plus they are fairly local to you.

I can recommend them without hesitation.

Hi James

Nice to see you here, it's a very friendly and civilised place compared to some!

The challenge I had with setting this poll, is that the poll system is very simple, only a single topic with a single choice (from many) is allowed, it would be much nicer if we could have multiple selectable choices and multiple topics/questions.

I do think however, that no-one so far has felt that they have been dealt with unfairly by either their dealer of Pentax (UK).

I agree that the reliability of any product decreases with usage and time and also that the main problem lenses are the first two SDM models. I also agree that optical alignment issues are quite common and that the SDM system as implemented is certainly not that fast. But alignment (and AF speed) are evident from new and can be dealt with at the time of purchase, whereas motor failure (like any other electrical/mechanical fault) is a potential failure and we should reasonably expect a low incidence of failures (under 1%) over a few years of reasonable use equating to say the same expected life of the shutter mechanism. i.e. around 100,000 actuations for a pro grade product.

I always advocated the use of ultrasonic ring motors rather than a micro motor as they are designed specifically for fast AF systems, but they do add bulk around the lens and are probably more expensive to implement.

I think that the confusion about AF speed arises from the use of the word Supersonic. SDM really stands for Silent Drive Motor rather than fast, maybe one day Pentax will release designs with ring motors? Maybe call them SRM lenses i.e. Supersonic Ring Motor.

So Far.

5 definite complaints (including the "maybe"!) detailed with 8 "yes" votes. There is some anonymous posting going on, so I shall discount 3 of the 8.

Of the "No" votes, many who have detailed a response have several lenses, a total of 63 lenses with no failures from 25 posters from 41 who have said "No" so there have been 16 anonymous "No problem" posters. If I take these 16 posters as owning 1 lens rather than the average of 2.5 lenses, that gives 79 "no" votes against 5 "yes".

Unfortunately there is no way of having several groups of tick boxes to fine tune the results more accurately.

So I would guess that the failure rate seems to be around 6% so far, mainly it seems with the first two designs, 16-50 & 50-135, though we do have a suspect 60-250.

Let's see how many more responses we get before we call it quits.

Sorry, will have to discount this as it's only for Pentax SDM lenses.

Silkypix Pro does record the lens data provided the lens writes it's data to the exif in the original file: Example below:




Silkypix V3 also records the exif in JPEGS. See below:

Having owned several heads and evaluating many others, I've finally settled on a Giottos MH1301-652C Series 2 ball head and have been very pleased with it. Take a look at the video at the bottom of the page. link

Another make of heads that are really very nice are the Feisol range but they are more expensive. link

Did you vote No?

If so, were either of these SDM failures? Because it doesn't sound like it.

I acknowledge that there are other issues, but I'm trying to keep a very narrow focus on the poll so we can identify only SDM failures, I trust you don't mind?

Thanks Tony,

Indeed, let's hope for a quick resolution. I'm sure we will all be interested to hear the result.

Thanks for all the details, it's very much appreciated.

Looks like we have 2 anonymous posters now.

Once again, please detail the lens(es) concerned.

If not, I will only count the "No" posts that are detailed, I feel that's only fair.

This poll is intended to obtain a fair and balanced result. I believe that no one here will flame or blame anyone who reports a fault, I certainly won't.