I was just going through some of the Amazon reviews on Pentax 55mm F1.4, saw a user compalining about SDM faliure in just a week (2011 review).
I had read about many SDM lenses failing and many people getting pretty annoyed about this. I dont own a Pentax so this was a new thing for me. I searched a bit more & found out that it was often (not sure if it's every time) caused due to discharge of a capacitor, when the Lens is kept away for long times and one needs to charge it by attaching it to the camera when switched on for it to start working.
Just while I was going through some Serious videos I found this Hilarious one. again from 2011.
Hitler's Pentax SDM fails
I guess Pentax was very notorious those days thanks to the SDM failures.
I wanted to know whether they have improved now and how often do we get SDM failures in 2014-15-16 (now that the FF K-1 is coming (Thanks Pentax), the bars will be raised), because their Screw Drive lenses are pretty notorious too, for noise.
Also was this caused due to faulty design, because as said by some, when the Capacitor was charged after a few minutes, it started working fine. So were these mostly normal working lenses which just needed some Capacitor charge & needn't be returned??
I may go for the K-S2/ K-3 in coming months (dont have any hope of K-1 anywhere near my budget
), so was curious.