1. My electronic level is off by about 3-5 degrees. From what I gather, there's no way to calibrate this on my camera, I'd have to send it in. Does Pentax consider this a valid reason for warranty service (ie you get free service)? Do they actually fix it when you send it in, or does it often come back still miscalibrated? How long does service like this last? Any chance they break something else on the camera?
2. Not really a big deal, but my viewfinder has a grimey or frosted glass look. It gets more noticible if you're looking at something bright, and if the camera is out of focus. It's hard to take a good picture of another camera's viewfinder, but I'll attach some iphone pics of it to try to show what I mean. The pics do have some noise, but most of the stuff that looks like noise in the viewfinder is actually the grimey/glazed effect I'm talking about.
It's not on the surface of the viewfinder (I cleaned it) and it also shows up if you look through the viewfinder without the lens on. Is it possible that the mirror is grimey? It doesn't obviously show up on pictures - but I once got a big, obvious thumbprint on a point and shoot lens once and yet when you looked at the pictures you couldn't tell - the camera somehow worked around it. Is it possible that this grimey layer is degrading the quality of my pictures without being quite obvious about it? Or is it just the focusing screen or something else in the viewfinder optical path?
3. I see a couple of lenses priced under the MSRP on some of the smaller online retailers who aren't official Pentax retailers. For instance, you can still get a DA-L 55-300 for $279. But I'm wondering... does this just mean those dealers are deciding they don't care if Pentax won't sell to them anymore and just getting rid of their current stock at the old prices?
4. In general, is there any news about whether the lens prices are expected to go down again? The value for the money of Pentax lenses was one of the big reasons I went with Pentax, but that instantly took a big hit, with most of the lenses I'm interested in (55-300, limited primes) instantly shooting up 20-50%.
5. I haven't been terribly impressed with the amount of detail in my pictures. I only have the 18-55WR so far, but I've read it's good for a kit lens, and I feel like the pictures I get often seem to have less detail than my Canon SX230, which isn't an especially sharp camera, being a compact superzoom.
I attached 100% crops of 3 infinity focus, small aperture shots. I don't think I can upload the originals (too big) so I'll link them. All pictures are from the camera's default jpeg engine, except the quality is 4 stars instead of 3. I specifically didn't use RAW or any post processing because I want you to see the untreated image. The crops may have suffered some sort of jpeg recompression, I'm not sure if photoshop does that. SR is engaged for all pictures, but they were handheld.
Is there any indicaton from those pics that the camera or lens has some sort of problem?
First 3 shots, grimey viewfinder.
Shot 4: 55mm, 100 iso, 1/200, F11
original here
Shot 5: 50mm, 320 iso, 1/400 f8
original here
Shot 6: 42mm, 100 iso, 1/100, F11
original here
Someone told me I might have a front focus issue. Can you have front focus at infinity? I don't really understand it on a technical level or how to evaluate it. Am I just expecting too much out of the kit lens? Do those pictures look normal? There's nothing specifically wrong, it just seems like the level of detail and sharpness is less than I expected.