Which Would You Do?

A while back I mentioned my K50 developed the aperture block failure symptoms. I followed suggestions on how to keep it going and so far that procedure has worked. I am not sure how long it will work so I have decided to either add a lens that will work with the K50's problem or just add a used K3. I like the K70 but after having gone through two K50's with aperture failure I am gun shy on the K70. It might work without a hitch but then again it might fail too. So, just curious, would you go with a K3 or a new lens?

It all depends on how much you want to spend. KAF4 lenses are pricey. The cheapest one is the DA 55-300mm PLM at about $396 at the moment. It's normally about $450. Then you jump to $1,300 to $1,900 for DA* or DFA*, FF Limited, & other FF KAF4 lenses. There are currently about 6 of them, but only 2 of them are APS-C specific. The other 4 are FF, but you can use them on the K-50.

The K-70 is still a risk, though it seems like there have been less solenoid failures so far. I personally wouldn't bother with one. I'd rather get a used K-3/3II instead. Yes. The image quality in the K-70 is fantastic, but there's always that chance of another solenoid failure later on. I will never buy another Pentax camera that uses a solenoid to control the aperture. I got burned twice with 2 K-50 bodies that were heavily used, but I fixed them myself.

You can always use older aperture type ring lenses, but manually focusing a lens through the viewfinder is pretty hard. If it had a split prism, it would be fairly easy, but if you change the screen, that might throw off the metering.

There is also the KP, though they're selling for too much at the moment. A used K-3/3II would be the cheapest & easiest. Hahaha!

The Squirrel Mafia wrote:

It all depends on how much you want to spend. KAF4 lenses are pricey. The cheapest one is the DA 55-300mm PLM at about $396 at the moment. It's normally about $450. Then you jump to $1,300 to $1,900 for DA* or DFA*, FF Limited, & other FF KAF4 lenses. There are currently about 6 of them, but only 2 of them are APS-C specific. The other 4 are FF, but you can use them on the K-50.

The K-70 is still a risk, though it seems like there have been less solenoid failures so far. I personally wouldn't bother with one. I'd rather get a used K-3/3II instead. Yes. The image quality in the K-70 is fantastic, but there's always that chance of another solenoid failure later on. I will never buy another Pentax camera that uses a solenoid to control the aperture. I got burned twice with 2 K-50 bodies that were heavily used, but I fixed them myself.

You can always use older aperture type ring lenses, but manually focusing a lens through the viewfinder is pretty hard. If it had a split prism, it would be fairly easy, but if you change the screen, that might throw off the metering.

It's also not really usable with lenses having a small maximum aperture.

There is also the KP, though they're selling for too much at the moment. A used K-3/3II would be the cheapest & easiest. Hahaha!

K3

Another vote for the K3, or KP if you can fine one at a reasonable price.

grcolts wrote:

Yes, I looked at used KP prices and they are too high right now. Used K3's are much more realistic. Thank you for your input. It is appreciated.

Yes indeed! At one point the KP was down to about +-$696 or so during one of the Black Friday sales. Can't remember if it was in 2019 or 2020. I refuse to pay more than that for a used KP. I also refuse to pay more than $730 for a used K-3II, since that was about the lowest price B&H/Adorama/Amazon had sold it for new.

There is also the filtered K-5II & unfiltered K-5IIs, though they're not KAF4 compatible & don't have focus peaking in live view. They do put out some very nice images, especially the K-5IIs without the AA filter. They range from about $250 to $450 or so on eBay.

I'm probably the last person you want to ask, so … my K-3iii has a problem which Ricoh UK insist I need to speak to their repair agent about, who in turn insists they're waiting for information from Ricoh UK … it also suffers from the intermittent lock-up problem which requires the camera to be switched off and then on again to restart it. Nevertheless, it continues to take pictures most of the time so I'm not too worried, and I'll probably never want to sell it, but it's certainly not as reliable as either my K-70 or my KP, neither of which have any major issues, though I just found out over the last few days that if I try to use the wi-fi on the KP to make videos, the camera overheats after a few minutes and drops the connection!

In the meantime, my K-70 is totally reliable after 25k exposures

No text.

If you don't want to move to a K3, you could move sideways into a K-5ii.

The Squirrel Mafia wrote:

You can always use older aperture type ring lenses, but manually focusing a lens through the viewfinder is pretty hard. If it had a split prism, it would be fairly easy, but if you change the screen, that might throw off the metering.

I've recently added catch-in focus to my Ks-2 routine, with good results. No guarantee that the AF module won't need adjustment for a specific lens, but my M85/2 seems to perform well this way.

I do own the white solenoid for future surgery, but for now I'm having fun

Interesting camera experiences. I would love to just bite the bullet and get the K70 as I love the articulating screen other Pentax's don't. I am just so darn afraid I will get a third Pentax that has that stupid aperture block issue. I will have to think long and hard. Thanks for your input.

This is similar to my two K-30's. Now they are both glorified paper weight. Should have kept my K-5ii's instead but I then opted for the similarity/simplicity in controls.