Originally posted by reh321 But the only parts available today are the part known to fail - the "good" part is no longer available from the part supplier - so someone would be doing the same task every few years.
I believe the best we could have hoped for from Ricoh was a discount on a future camera - but that is pushing things.
Unless we were there in the room, we likely will never know what options were considered, and what they could have done. If Pentax R&D had been put off while the issue was adequately addressed to keep forum members happy, would that have been OK? Or if the cost of the imagined "perfect " repair was paid for in part by other systems putting prices up, would that have been OK?
I personally expect heavy users should buy more expensive systems. Systems like the K-30 and K-50 I would suggest are for lighter users. It's sad the cameras failed, but there's a bigger picture here. More durable options were available and the projected shutter counts were known. ( the published shutter count was less than expected, but still, there were more durable options available for those concerned about durability.) Did people really expect K-5 or K-3 durability for K-30, K-50 prices? For a lot of folks 5000 shutter actuations a year is a lot of actuations, and the cameras should last 10 years at that rate. We aren't talking about a flagship models here.
I'm reading all these complaints, and what I end up thinking is "I don't know enough." And a suspicion that Pentax knows more than anyone here about what was possible and what wasn't. And the K-P average selling price is over $1000 as opposed to $620 for a K-30. I assume that means they've added value to make sure a K-30 type situation doesn't happen again, but now a lot of those K-30 customers will find the camera too expensive.
In any case, i suspect after the K-xx series seems to have ended with the K-70, my suspicion is that Pentax will never agin try to put their best image producing tech into lower priced bodies. They may abandon lower priced bodies all together, and if they don't, they'll go the route everyone else does. Inferior sensor and inferior imaging tech, a whole cheaply designed system with durable 2 or 3 fps shutter. Not the best tech they have in a cheaper package for low volume users.
So I suspect the aperture block failure did change Pentax, just not in the way everyone thinks. Clearly, if you take a good solid system and then try and cheap it down for the masses, there are a lot of things that could go wrong. That strategy failed, brought them a lot of bad press, and the K-P costs almost as much as my K-3 did. Hopefully it's been a learning experience for everyone.
You look at the K-70 and Pentax tried to bring their most current tech including custom chips (the accelerator chip, the same one used on the K-1ii) in an $800 body. I doubt any camera company will ever try that again. And while from a PR standpoint, that may have been failure, and for a lot of users who should have gone flagship and didn't it was a bummer, it's the low volume 2,000 shot a year guys who will miss out. Snatch up those K-70s while you can dudes. You've got a K-1 quality camera at a K-30 type price, if you're a low shutter actuation shooter. Looking at the numbers, If my wife had bought a K-30 instead of her K-5 she'd certainly have been on her second camera, and buying the cheaper camera wouldn't have saved her a cent, and probably would have cost her money. But those K-xx series camera are still great image quality at an affordable price, even if they won't give you as many shutter actuations as a flagship model. Those opportunities will be thing of the past.
There's always a lot of ways to look at a given situation.
Maybe Pentax should have done this that or the other, or maybe what they did was the right thing for the long haul. No more K-xx series cameras, or design philosophy. It clearly wasn't worth it. If that isn't what you wanted, your complaints were counterproductive.