Originally posted by adr1an Or alternatively, just buy anything manufactured post January 2011 but not between March and May and you should be fine.... i.e... New Stock...
If you are buying Current New Stock.. you shouldn't have a worry in the world and checking for Stains will probably just cause you to see things that aren't there. Its a moot issue and has been since oh.. about January this year....
Mirror Flop (the March - May problem) has also been fixed, so really - this would be what you'd want to 'check for' - which you can't... so if you do end up with one of the select few effected batch - then just replace it under warranty if/when the issue arises and problem solved.
Heh. My 'current new stock' from Adorama from a month back is 393*, manufactured 1/24/2011. I'm sure there are other 'older' cameras cycling through the system still.
I don't think buying today is any guarantee of a newer build, however, or certainly wasn't in my case.
No problems, knock on wood. I'll wait until i have a few thousand shots on it, then check for the stains again.
There's other data in the full exif info, like production code (2.1 in my case) and internal serial number - I'm pretty sure Pentax never made any claims regarding batch, sn range or anything else of actual use..where did the statement of date ranges for the mirror flop issue come from? I haven't seen anyone pinpointing this to a known manufacturing date or anything besides 'may develop over time' pretty much.. ???
It would indeed be great if someone pushed for recording info on date of mfgr for any of those who have had problems, as someone previously suggested. Of course, it would be great to also move that to a single thread, or perhaps a single thread per issue, instead of just randomly as someone else has their lens release fall off, finds newer occurrences of sensor stains, etc.
I'm hopeful we'll be heading to the mountains sometime in October, so that should see a lot of pictures, relatively speaking, likely 1000 over a week or so, possibly more. I figure if all's well at that point, I'll just add some tape to the lens release and call it good. (Being mostly serious)