[Rite]

bet a blower brush and move on dust is a fact of life
f 40 really, can't imagine a reason for ever shooting this stopped down (diffraction would be a big issue if there was something besides blue sky IE a real world image)

=========================

Wasn't the whole idea here the grime came from the factory and not induced by the user? The camera was new, out of the box.

What did I miss?

[Andi Lo]

I've seen this happen to other brand users as well. My friend bought a new EOS 1000D last year that had this exact same issue. He exchanged it and all is dandy. Not the same thing as the K-5 issue as this is easily cleanable and IMHO is not a manufacturing issue / defect, just simply someone not being careful enough with dust during testing at the factory. I can understand if a first time DSLR buyer find this discouraging though. I would be pissed too if my k100d came with dust specks. Do what you have to do and move on.

[hallenti]

I have purchased several Pentax DSLRs and found the quality to be very good. I am sure that out of the thousands (tens/hundreds of thousands?) of cameras built each run by any manufacturer, occasionally something goes wrong in the process and a button isn't secured, or a sensor isn't cleaned, etc.

No matter who makes them, there will be issues. For the most part, people more often complain publicly when there is some issue but don't as readily expose exceptional quality or good value. So, these forums tend to, by the nature of how we all think, draw issues more often than praise. I find though that we have a good number of people giving positive reports on cameras, features and experiences with their Pentax equipment, which I think is nice. I would suggest as someone else did, run the Sensor Cleaning, and failing that, get a blower and do the cleaning. If all else fails, perhaps a warranty cleaning, or an exchange is in order.

[eddie1960]

I have purchased several Pentax DSLRs and found the quality to be very good. I am sure that out of the thousands (tens/hundreds of thousands?) of cameras built each run by any manufacturer, occasionally something goes wrong in the process and a button isn't secured, or a sensor isn't cleaned, etc.

No matter who makes them, there will be issues. For the most part, people more often complain publicly when there is some issue but don't as readily expose exceptional quality or good value. So, these forums tend to, by the nature of how we all think, draw issues more often than praise. I find though that we have a good number of people giving positive reports on cameras, features and experiences with their Pentax equipment, which I think is nice. I would suggest as someone else did, run the Sensor Cleaning, and failing that, get a blower and do the cleaning. If all else fails, perhaps a warranty cleaning, or an exchange is in order.

It would be a hell of a stubborn bit of dust if the first 2 don't get it, if it required a service cleaning then by all means an exchange would make sense, I just think the first step before complaining would be do the basics (run the sensor cleaning a couple of time (with the sensor facing down to give gravity assist, use a blower and if that doesn't resolve it ask for an exchange, if that doesn't resolve your problem then definitely complain about it. after 25 years of CE retail I have seen defects out of the box at all price and quality levels from $20 phones to $35000 plasma tvs (now of course much less expensive but in the first generation of 50" screens crazy expensive and a lot closer to hand built than what we are dealing with here) Leica m8.2 and M9 have been known to have out of the box issues why wouldn't a mass produced entry level dslr
So like I said before, give it a clean and go out and enjoy the camera, we do after all by these so we can go out and enjoy photography (with the possible exception of the brick wall picture brigade )