[stevebrot]

I'm resurrecting this, because my six week old k50 has been intermittently deciding to hang the mirror or shutter, then freezes, and dies completely until the battery is popped out and then back in.

On top of that, there's a hair behind the back screen and debris in the viewfinder. Seems the weather sealing isn't very good. I'm thinking my camera was made on a Friday...

In my case was a problem only with the kit lens. The only lens whith plastic mount. I think, that problem comes from the ground conection.
The solution was only use a metal mount lenses, and look the video to unlock the mirror.
How a malfunctioning aperture mechanism can cause mirror flop in Pentax DSLRs - YouTube

If either of you are having symptoms similar to that described in this thread, the issue is due to a failure of the mirror/diaphragm control components and will become progressively worse. It will not self-correct, but is easily fixable and is covered under warranty. The repair will only take about a day once Ricoh/Pentax approves warranty payment to the repair facility. The shop (at least Precision Camera Repair here in the U.S.) will also do a thorough cleaning and adjustment of the camera before shipping it back.


Steve

(...went through the repair process at Precision earlier this year with a K-50 suffering from this issue...)

[Mothballs]

If either of you are having symptoms similar to that described in this thread, the issue is due to a failure of the mirror/diaphragm control components and will become progressively worse. It will not self-correct, but is easily fixable and is covered under warranty. The repair will only take about a day once Ricoh/Pentax approves warranty payment to the repair facility. The shop (at least Precision Camera Repair here in the U.S.) will also do a thorough cleaning and adjustment of the camera before shipping it back.


Steve

(...went through the repair process at Precision earlier this year with a K-50 suffering from this issue...)

Yah, mine got sent in for warranty. It froze up three times and that was that.

[grcolts]

I have the same problem. I bought mine from Adorama as well. And it happens only with 18-55 WR Kit lens. It takes forever to focus and the motor sound is so loud. Eventually it will take a shot and i have no idea at what zoom level it is taking the picture.

More over i mainly use my takumar lenses (manual lenses) and didn't have any such problem.

Will contact Adorama and will see whether they will do anything or else i have to send to Pentax for repair. I bought it mine few months back (definitely more than 30 days). I noticed this issue recently as i never tried to shoot in auto mode and hardly used the kit lenses.!!

And i don't have this problem even in live view. May be ones or twice I was able to take pictures in live mode.tried with 50-200 kit lens as well and still the same issue.

Will contact adorama and will see what their response is going to be.

This is very interesting as this problem just happened to me this weekend while out shooting with my K50 and the 18-55WR Kit lens.
If I removed the lens and put it back on, the camera would work for a shot or two, then I would have to do that again. When I got home, I replaced this lens with another and the camera worked fine. Now, today, I put the 18-55WR back on it and have been shooting with it with no problems? I am holding my breath. Now, I have lost some confidence taking this K50 out into the field without a back-up. Cost to send it to Pentax for repair is around $170 dollars, while local places want $250. For that much money, I almost could buy a brand new K50 with warranty. Anyway, I am waiting to see how the camera continues to shoot. I have shot many images with it and never had a problem until this weekend. Anyone else see a connection between using the 18-55WR and the K50 for this problem?
GR

[what_canon]

Sorry for digging this up.. but my newly bought K50 has a similar problem. Comes and goes, focuses only in LV but not via the viewfinder. Cleaned out contacts and messed around with the mirror slider thing helped it correct itself. Any way to prevent this from happening again? Not really a huge deal, just an annoyance I suppose.

[insomniac]

Sorry for digging this up.. but my newly bought K50 has a similar problem. Comes and goes, focuses only in LV but not via the viewfinder. Cleaned out contacts and messed around with the mirror slider thing helped it correct itself. Any way to prevent this from happening again? Not really a huge deal, just an annoyance I suppose.

Got warranty? Send it in. It's ~150$ with no warranty. DONT THINK ABOUT IT. dont make the same mistake I did.

[ananda]

I may be late on this issue, but I recently experienced the same issue on my K50. Unfortunately i faced it after almost 2 years so no warranty or return options available. I have sent it for repair and waiting for the camera. I love this camera but it just sometimes these issues make u feel like if you made good decision or not. I had Cannon and it had condensation issues but it was around 7 years back. I hope i don't encounter the same issue again.

[insomniac]

AFAIK it's once in a lifetime issue. Pentax knows there is a problem, but it's not so large or so often to recall all K-50 and K-30. Simply those that already out get to be serviced. Technician at Pentax Athens knew exactly the problem just from describing it so there must be a troubleshooting guide from Pentax itself for this problem.

[Scorpio71GR]

On a group photo shoot last year two people had their cameras completely fail. One was a Cannon the other was Nikkon, both were full frame cameras. This is not isolated to any one brand. My K50 has performed flawlessly. My K3 however has had the mirror stick up several times. Since the last firmware update I have not had it happen. On any new camera I always buy the extended warranty. Even if your camera never fails you get one free CLA with it. That is worth the price of the warranty alone. You until 30 days after your purchase to buy the warranty.

[T. Mushrooms]

I've had problems with my K50 that appear to have rectified themselves; both my memory cards were giving intermittent errors. I updated to the latest firmware, but that didn't fix it. Taking it to a camera shop to show them the problem did, though! It has worked perfectly from the moment I put it in the tech's hands until now. She didn't do anything to fix it, it just refused to perform it's behaviour for her. The problem isn't happening anymore anyways, so for now I'm going to assume there was some debris in the memory card slot that was causing the problem.

A fellow student in my local photo class also had a K50 with problems. His had to go back to Pentax for repairs; it was locking up and the electronic menu system was - for lack of a better term - wonky.

With the only two K50's I've personally laid hands on both having weird issues, I'm thinking maybe the K50 build quality is somewhat lacking. I love the feature set with the camera, but if it doesn't work when you want to use it - well - the features don't much matter, do they?

I have had the same problem and also software failure. Sent for repairs, broke again. This camera is garbage. In fact, I have owned 6 Pentax cameras, and all are garbage. The Ricoh customer service is also poor, and they told me "Too bad - you are out of luck, sucker!"

[genobeau]

Hello to all. Guess you know why I have arrived to this site. I am the sad owner of a useless Pentax K50. I say so based on 30 years of taking photos and having owned many, many Pentax cameras and lenses. IT IS TOTALLY UNDEPENDABLE.
I will never buy a Pentax again! When taking basic pictures it 'locks' up and the photo is ruined. It continues as long as it feels like it. Disgusting camera.

[Parallax]

Thanks for sharing.

[BigMackCam]

@genobeau... I'd return it under warranty. That's your best bet...

EDIT: Just a thought, if you're done with Pentax, you should get a good price for all your Pentax lenses - there's plenty of demand for them.

[UncleVanya]

I have had the same problem and also software failure. Sent for repairs, broke again. This camera is garbage. In fact, I have owned 6 Pentax cameras, and all are garbage. The Ricoh customer service is also crap, and they told me "Too bad - you are out of luck, sucker!"

If the last quite us accurate and you documented it I think someone would be in danger of losing their job.

Every camera brand these days has this kind of failure to a small number of the systems. I had a canon dslr user tell me his lens had been broken and repaired twice - only to have it break again while I was using it (zoom ring lock up). The complexity of the products and the nature of complex interactions means failure happens more often than we would like.

Detailed statistics are hard to get. pntrs.com/t/TUJGRktHSkJHRkpISUVCRkpOSkVN?url=Lensrentals.com failure data on lenses suggests that Pentax is not appreciably worse or better than other brands.

---------- Post added 06-08-16 at 09:56 AM ----------

Hello to all. Guess you know why I have arrived to this site. I am the sad owner of a useless Pentax K50. I say so based on 30 years of taking photos and having owned many, many Pentax cameras and lenses. IT IS TOTALLY UNDEPENDABLE.
I will never buy a Pentax again! When taking basic pictures it 'locks' up and the photo is ruined. It continues as long as it feels like it. Disgusting camera.

That sucks. But I am afraid the replacement brand may be no better statistically speaking.

[Racer X 69]

Hello to all.

Hello to you too.

Welcome to Pentax Forums.

Guess you know why I have arrived to this site.

Your love of everything Pentax?

I am the sad owner of a useless Pentax K50.

Sorry to read this.

I say so based on 30 years of taking photos and having owned many, many Pentax cameras and lenses.

I have to ask, in 30 years you must have quite the collection of Pentax gear then?

I do.

Started with a Ricoh XR2S film camera and a Pentax M40~80 lens. From there my collection grew. Now I have many K mount lenses, more Pentax M series, an A series, several DA series, also Sigma, a Vivitar, and a really cool Russian lens that makes the neatest start shaped bokeh out of points of light.

I also have three Pentax Digital cameras, the *istDL, K10 and K5IIs.

All have performed flawlessly.

First time.

Every time.

I have been able to make many wonderful photographs with these fantastic cameras.

IT IS TOTALLY UNDEPENDABLE.

Totally?

Well have you explored the warranty process?

If so, what has been the outcome?

I will never buy a Pentax again!

Never is a very long time.

When taking basic pictures it 'locks' up and the photo is ruined.

Is the photo ruined, or do you simply miss the opportunity to make it?

It continues as long as it feels like it.

Odd.

I didn't know a camera was capable of feelings.

Disgusting camera.

I've encountered many things in my days in this life that were disgusting.

But I have yet to come across a camera that inspired the emotion of disgust.

......................



..............................


Perhaps you meant to say it has disappointed you.


I could understand how when a new camera fails to perform it might be disappointing.



So give the warranty process a go.

You may find out that things will turn out for the better.

[stevebrot]

Hello to all. Guess you know why I have arrived to this site. I am the sad owner of a useless Pentax K50. I say so based on 30 years of taking photos and having owned many, many Pentax cameras and lenses. IT IS TOTALLY UNDEPENDABLE.
I will never buy a Pentax again! When taking basic pictures it 'locks' up and the photo is ruined. It continues as long as it feels like it. Disgusting camera.

BTW...welcome to the PentaxForums!

Creating an account to post a rant is generally more effective if you start a new thread. That being said, you did attract the attention of two three moderators and one very bored long time member (me).

The standard response for a sick camera report goes something like this:

• If your camera was recently purchased new, the dealer is your best resource. They will usually work with you to find the problem and/or replace it on the spot.
• Have you contacted Pentax customer support?
• Let's see if we can help you. It may be related to some quirk of how you are using your camera.

Assuming we are at the last point, "locks up" is pretty generic. If you mean, "will not take a photo", the answer is usually that the AF system has been set to AF-S (single shot) and that the camera is unable to attain focus. Another consideration might be power. What are you using for batteries? If using the AA adapter, it is important to only use fresh alkaline or single-use lithium batteries or quality rechargeables (e.g. Eneloop or equivalent). At some point the suggestion is generally made to clean the mount contacts, which brings us to another possibility. Are you, by chance, using your K-50 with your K-mount manual focus lenses? If so, turn AF off. If AF is on in AF-S mode, the shutter will not release until focus is detected by the AF system (a feature called catch-in-focus). If the lenses lack the "A" position on the aperture ring, the camera will play dead until you enable aperture ring in the custom settings menu. Enabling the aperture ring allows you to take pictures with those lenses, but metering requires special technique...but one thing at a time.

It may be that your camera is truly flaky. In which case, is it under warranty? If not, it may be cheaper to replace than repair. Sorry


Steve