Originally posted by Oricman The people I know with Canon's have found them to be very reliable. (My brother used Canon for many years before switching to Nikon and bringing out a book on wildlife photography.)
I'm not sure a lens failure out of warranty is in the same ball park as the level of body issues found with Pentax. When I had lens issues I was told to buy a new lens/ try another lens/ get it repaired. Out of four lenses I've had two fixed. Of the other two (kit lenses) one tends to have an area that goes soft on the left hand side. But still you can swap a lens and still get pictures if the body works.
I guess with cameras getting more complicated, they have more to go wrong. I don't think it is unreasonable to expect a camera to function for a good 10,000 shots before needing repair. Shutter and aperture block failures seem to happen with far less shutter counts than that.
As I've said before here, I had two consecutive Canon Rebels fail with a total shutter count of under 5000.
Originally posted by Oricman With camera batteries lasting for a few hundred shots and having no film to worry about it's not uncommon to take a few hundred shots in a day. I've taken about 3500 since getting the Pentax with a big chunk being test shots trying to get the camera/ lens working/ set up.
I'm not sure what the relevance of this is. You and I are different, obviously. I consider the deliberate methods I developed using film to be good, and I continue those methods today. Recently I took trains from Indiana to California, so I could help my daughter drive back here; during that eight-day trip, I incremented the shutter count of my Q-7 by 110, while taking 32 unique pictures. (*)
Originally posted by Oricman If DSLRs are so unreliable we'd all be going back to bridge cameras. I've had a few over the years which have worked well. One Olympus got a bit temperamental but carried on working regardless. With the expense of DSLRs I can't afford to keep throwing money at Pentax for repairs. I've repaired lenses already and wanted to buy more lenses but the body starting to give problems so soon is no assurance to stick with Pentax. I should be looking to buy a new K70 and use the lenses on that but Pentax seems to just keep using the same dodgy components. If you have an electric circuit that keep blowing a fuse you don't just keep changing the fuse - you find the problem and repair that so it doesn't blow the fuse.
No, I would still be using DSLR's, because they meet my needs better {I did try the bridge camera alternative for nine months}. And I remain unconvinced that the aperture block issue is as pervasive as you think it is. Yes, you and others had that problem, just as I had problems with Rebels, but we have no systematic information on the subject, just self-reported data {which will lean towards the disappointed/disaffected}.
added:
(*) shutter count for K-30 for those ten daze was zero, of course, so I made sure to take a picture during the next week in case idleness is indeed a cause of aperture block issues.