[davidmanze]

Two points have to be made clear here, 

  Firstly, the reliability of the Pentax SDM silent drive motors, it's one of "the" most common gripes on the forums, a good proportion of Pentaxians  "won't" buy them anymore because of the breakdowns at $250-300 a pop to repair, take the DA* SDM lenses out of the equation and you have a smaller choice of the most important FLs. Hence people look to TPMs...   Pentax has "never" admitted the problem, there are now new motors and new boards for repairs, however, there are a lot of lenses still sitting on shelves in warehouses waiting to be sold and the complaints are still coming in.

 That is why new lenses all have DC motors! AFAIK the last one to have an SDM was the DA60-250mm, the DA18-270 has Tamrons own motor and I have never seen a post of complaint.

  Secondly,

                        The availability of third party lenses in the Pentax mount, Tamron has all but abandoned Pentax with it's newer lenses and Sigma only throw us the odd one here or there, this can become galling when reading glowing reviews of the latest "can't have" lenses. Hence my S/H Nikon D7100!

 

 I think these are points worth mentioning!

   

  

   Pentax has the (mostly) complete lines of lenses, but gets criticized for being boring.  It's just funny to contrast the arguments against them.  

 

[Guest]

AFAIK only 2 - the firsts - of the SDM lenses were known to have SDM issues; however, to the point I would never buy a second hand 16-50 (I would not buy a 16-50 at all, if I can get by without one). Indeed, a nasty problem for the owners.

Indeed, the last Pentax SDM lenses were the 60-250 (which I own, and I'm happy with) and the 55 f/1.4, well, not really - there was the D FA645 25mm as well (what's happening with that lens? It's MIA on Ricoh Imaging Japan's site... perhaps a DC motor upgrade? :lol: ). Nothing out of the ordinary AFAIK... except that they do use consumer-level "ultrasonic" micromotors, a big no-no for a high-end lens.

 

I think I've read about one DC motor failure... but yeah, those things are reliable. The one problem left to solve is speed.

 

Does Pentax have a WOW factor these days? I say they do. Just hold a K-3, with one of their compact, high quality primes. Pentax is about user experience, and less about benchmarks and specifications. 

[davidmanze]

  There's been many polls over the years on SDM motors and lens models, yes AFAI remember it was the 16-50mm (I had a dead one) and the DA 50-135mm and 17-70Mmm  which were the most common sufferers and the eldest, but sadly reports started filtering through about the rest, the DA55mm had the least problems being one of the lightest models. 

 

BTW. All the Pentax SDM lenses use the same motors and circuits except the DA 18-270mm which is basically a rebadged Tamron lens, it also uses a Tamron motor.

[DanPr]

Howdy all
Now i'm nev right here, as well as I'd like to state hi to everyone aged users: ).

[netrex]

It will be interesting to see what this is.

 

On the K-01, I bought one a couple of years ago to have for manual video (which the K-5 of course doesn't have), and I ended up using it a lot more than I thought. I used the LCDVF on it and was quite happy with it. I sold it later (after I sold the K-5 to get the X-T1) when I knew the X-T1 would get its manual video as well.

 

Add a viewfinder, don't hold it down with pretty much NO buffer, and it will already be much more useful camera as it was with only those changes.

[dave9t5]

Sit down and pour yourself a stiff drink guys, your going to need one!

 

  Pentax has finally pulled it's head out the sand and has announced  at CES, a new, IMO, handsome APSc DSLR with (drumrole) a fully articulated screen and (trumpet fanfare) built in WiFi, and  (orchestral crescendo)  a new collapsible 18-50mm silent drive kit lens, all in one wild earth shattering swipe!

 

  

 

Le voilà:

 

 http://www.pentaxforums.com/articles/pen...-2015.html

 

  This is such a welcome relief after the K-S1 flashing light fiasco, (I thought they'd lost the plot)          

 

     Well done Pentax!

 

Looks like it's going to be called the K-S2:

http://www.pentaxforums.com/forums/16-pe...oming.html

http://digicame-info.com/2015/02/k-s2.html