It was with a heavy heart that I had to send my K30 back to B&H today. It all started this morning, when I pulled out the K30 to see how ISO 12800 looked. The camera had last been used 2 days ago, when I had taken a video. I turned on the camera, changed the setting from movie to Av and set the ISO to 12800. I snapped a photo in my kitchen, a room where I've literally taken thousands of photos with my K200D.
The first photo I took had a dark shadow over the top quarter of the frame. I thought maybe my eyes were deceiving me, so I took a few more. The shadowed band changed positions but was still there. I dropped the ISO to 6400, then 1600. Still there. I forced myself not to panic and tried the card in my K200D. Those photos looked perfect - no banding, no shadows. I'd put off installing the new firmware for the K30, but I tried that next and snapped a few after it had updated. The shadows were still there - not in every shot, not in the same place, but ruining every shot they were in.
I would have loved to have tested it more to see what the issue was, but there was no way I was keeping that body. I'm moving in two weeks, so I'm cutting it close to get a new body from B&H by then. Rest assured that I'll be testing the next one thoroughly upon arrival. It was a shame, though, as it appears to be in every other way a stellar camera.