Thanks for the advice. I’m not quite sure if it was when it came back from the repairer’s or shortly afterwards. In any case it had a least one fully charged battery in it for a while. I suspect they’ll say send it in for assessment, which costs me postage each time, and even if they don’t repair it, they charge to return it. I am beginning to think the old Pentax quality control is a thing of the past.

I have just got the camera (K30) back after the aperture block was repaired. The camera is 2 ½ years old. Now it will not retain the date / time however quickly the battery is changed.

But probably it's not a worry to Ricoh compared with the 35 in 2.5 million Galaxy 7s. But they don’t burst into flames.

I saw this survey on another forum. About 30% of K30 owners have had this problem based on quite a meaningful sample. http://www.pentaxforums.com/articles/photo-articles/pentax-aperture-block-failur...

That’s interesting. I had a slightly different experience. The original quote was £90 + VAT which was reduced to £75 + VAT on appeal to Ricoh. The repair details are identical. The camera is over two and a half years old so I think it’s a reasonable outcome.

Yeh mine finally bit the dust and every shot is black. I’m going the Johnsons route too, but I’m not sure I will get it done FOC. Maybe weight of numbers will come into force and we'll all get justice from Pentax. However even their repair quote makes it a better alternative to buying a new camera so I hope the repair lasts longer than the original.

If it was a BMW air bag issue the K30 would be recalled years after the warranty expired, but a failed camera diaphragm motor doesn’t command the same attention. Nobody is going to sue because their picture is black. I was ‘brand committed’ having had Pentaxes for many decades, but now I’m disillusioned. Some say the problem has been eliminated on the later K series but I have no personal experience to know if it's true.

Just to add to the weight of evidence. I used manual lenses from an old Spotmatic for a couple of years so there was no problem. To get with it I bought a 35mm Pentax lens and was surprised to find the first shot was black. You think it’s you to start with, but after looking into it is isn’t. Fortunately, only the first shot is black at the moment and all subsequent shots are correctly exposed. I’m reluctant to rely on Ricoh doing the honourable thing that somebody else experienced so at the moment I click once and then again.