Originally posted by MrPetkus Dammit all to hell. Mine has it, too. Did wet cleaning to no avail.
Here are a few comments and rants:
1) I purchased mine from Amazon and while I could easily exchange it with them without much fanfare I'm going to try to return through Pentax. Why? Because some warehouse employee is simply going to grab another K5 off the shelf and send it out -- another draw from the hat. Whereas I imagine Pentax will ensure a defect-free replacement.
2) Someone posted a comment suggesting this isn't a big deal since it's under warranty. Just send it back. This is a big deal to me since my calendar is practically booked this month with shoots - this is holiday season! I sold my K7 to fund this purchase and my d700 was recently stolen. No way I'm going to show up at my client's place with my Nex.
3) Just noticed that the "Dust Alert" function is not available -- WTF?!? Why? It was there on my K7. I'm not one for conspiracies but either Pentax QA is completely inept or they knew damn well about this problem and wasn't willing to sacrifice the holiday shopping season. I know for sure "Dust Alert" would have picked this up.
4) I wish I wasn't so consistently impulsive. There was no pressing reason to upgrade to the K5 but no, I
had to have it.
5) In reality, this defect won't have any real impact. I'm not shooting at very small apertures. But I spent $1430 for a body, too.
1) While it's true that returning it to Pentax might give you a better shot at a defect-free body, I imagine that might take a while and would directly impact your point in comment (2). If you got a replacement from Amazon, while there is no guarantee you'd get a "good copy", at least you'd never have any downtime without a body. Worst case you send the second body back along with the original if they're both "bad".
2) Sold both my K-7 and K-x as well. Having second thoughts about not holding on to one of them, at least for a little while.
3) Make sure you have the body set to AF. If the body is set to MF, "Dust Alert" will be grayed out (per my experience and the K-5 manual).
4) Same here.
5) Agreed.