[avcabob]

Maybe I'm a sadist, but I want to watch that happen. I keep trying to picture in my head what that could mean. I'm on a subway. Maybe the lens falls off, landing on a woman's foot who is wearing open toed sandals. She shrieks in pain, causing a man to spill his scalding hot coffee on a baby. The mother of the baby yells at the man, and the father of the baby punches the man in the face. A wild melee ensues, and this car happens to be the one Robert DeNiro was riding on. Well, he's dead now. When it's discovered it was my Tamron 90mm that came loose from a faulty mounting on my K20D, the Japanese are blamed, and we're now about five years into World War III. That, my friends, is how a digital camera fails catastrophically.

That just made my night

[Stefan Carey]

[QUOTE=drwho9437;415732]So maybe I was just dumb, but I wanted to try Pentax, so I purchased a used K10D after the K20D and hit the market when lots of people were starting to sell the K10Ds to get K20D. The market price at that time was just around 500 dollars for a K10D in perfect shape. 3 months later it is more like 325. I personally thought most of the deprecation had occurred at 500 dollars, and thus I wasn't likely to loose a ton of money on the body if I needed to resell it. I did and I lost 40% of my money. That is HUGE. Very burned I feel. Does Pentax just not have enough used demand to sustain the prices or what? Why so low for a 10 MP camera that is essentially the same as the K20D other than the sensor.

If you look at the larger picture you will see other cameras suffer the same fate: its not the brand, its the free market at work.

I find the title of your post irritating as it implies there is something wrong with Pentax cameras, when you are simply observing what happens to the price of goods when the new model appears. It is the same with cars. Could I say there is something wrong with my Mazda because I timed a purchase badly just before the new model came out? I believe it is a nonsensical and misleading title to a post. My Mazda is an excellent car. My buying decisions and the market might be the problem.

If anything you have demonstrated a good reason to buy Pentax again and again: if you expect good value as you obviously do (we all do) no other brand offers the backward compatibiity of lenses, and therefore is a huge cost saving. I am using lenses made in 1975 with excellent results. Not only have I saved several hundred dollars, I have also helped recycle precious resources.

[*isteve]

This stupid thread is getting interesting.

I have a LX (1980) that did not have the sticking mirror until a few weeks ago (looking for somewhere to send it for service), it worked fine until then. My Super A and Program A works perfect (1983 and 84). And I still use these cameras for film. I have lenses from the 60's, 70' and 80's that work just as fine as when they were new. The funny thing is that that several of the lenses and the LX would still sell for a good price, some even for more than when they were manufactured.
My Commodore VIC 20 computer from the 80's (20kBytes memory if I remember correctly) still works (!!!), tested last year. The tape recorder (!) loads simple games like the worm which has been stored on the type of tape cassets that we used in the 80's to record music on and make our own mix-tapes (didn't think this sort of magnetic memory should last that long). My sony stereo from mid 80's still work (have had to fix it some times).

But my MZ-5 has developed the problem with uncomplete film forward (its most common error I think) twice and been serviced, first time after just two years. My *istDS has got crazy exposures (where only M and Tv give reliable results) and are on its way for a fix, and it is only a few years old. The modern stereo we bought for the kitchen two years ago is already working really bad, quite modern digitalized washing machine got serious problems after only two years (of course some month after the warranty gone out).
And computers...don't talk about it. My Unix machines in the 90's used to last for 4-5 years. Now no one want stationary computers of any sort. Laptops, well I must be buying 10-20 every year. Our Ph.D. students used to be happy with a Laptop for the 4 years it is supposed to take to write a Ph.D. thesis, but now they often wants a new after 2 years, and honestly, I seams to be changing laptop also every 2nd year nowadays. It appears to be a combination of rather crappy products and endlessly increasing features which make us want new computers even before the old are really used to its end. If you really carry the laptop with you everywhere it is beginning to fall apart after two years, and with the operation system you usually get the first small problems within half a year. On the other hand, in in a few years everything on the lap top except the weight is doubled and the new prices are just going down down. DSLR market behaves much the same, and one can see all these posts and threads here were people who appears to have had a K10D for a year or a K20D for half a year are in sort of panic that it is getting old ("when will Pentax release the K3D or K30D or whatever, I can't wait any longer!!!"). Not strange that 2nd hand prices on these products are low!

I get some sort of feeling that after the mid 90's build quality went down on all sorts of consumer electronics from cameras and computers to stereos and washing machines. At the same time, they became too complex, the electronics too integrated for myself to fix them.
If I have the LX fixed now and take care of it, I would not be surprised if I'm still using it 20 years from now, and for my old manual lenses I think the odds are even better, but will I be able to use the K20D or *istDS 20 years from now, or the digital autofocus lenses?

And what about mobile phones. Does anyone really need 3G and video-calls, or TV in the mobile? I've read recently that there are more than 20 million old mobile phones in peoples closets only in Sweden (with a 9 million population), not counting that the parents old phones are first usually inherited by the kids.

Honestly, look at the increasing stress of mankind on this planet and the rapid consumption of all sorts of natural resources for short term consumption followed by mountains of garbage and rivers of waste.
We cannot afford (not talking $$$ now) this sort of consumption for ever. I know a lot of people owe their jobs and perhaps the whole western economy is based on this consumption, but there will be worse problems than this in the end. We do not need another camera/phone/laptop/wide screen TV/... that last for just a few years! We need more Takumar lenses!!! Built to be used for a generation or more. We must learn to build things in that way again!

(sorry for drifting away from the topic)

Cant disagree with any of that. Question is how will it change?

[ryan s]

I hope you are able to get it resolved. Proper sensor/viewfinder alignment and registration is pretty fundamental. With any luck they will offer to replace with a new K20D!

Steve

Now THAT would be nice! It's better to be surprised than disappointed though...so I'm not holding my breath haha