Originally posted by Rin
why would it just happen to a small batch.
Many reasons, really. Here are a few off the top of my head (based on my knowledge of engineering and manufacturing):
- they sourced the faulty part from many different vendors, and one vendor had a "bad" run
- the faulty part comes from one vendor, and that vendor had a bad run one week
- the assembly at the Pentax factory had a bad run
Products are rarely made on one long, continuous production run, especially all the components that go into higher assemblies like cameras. Pentax manufacturing orders parts in stages so they can be assembled at one time. That means the parts manufacturers run batches of one product, and then sometimes run other products, then go back to the original product, and so on. If there's a bad run, sometimes it may not be caught until later.
Of course, it could also be a design flaw, but if that was the case we'd be hearing more about it. It's highly likely it's just a bad part run. That stinks if it's YOU with the bad part, but I don't think it's a reason to avoid a great camera. All brands suffer problems.