I recently had a very nice experience with Pentax Colorado. The story starts about a year ago when I did serious damage to my LX Motor Drive . I don't think I ever related this incident to the list because it was, well, quite embarrassing. I was going to try to shoot some birds in the marsh near my house, and I fitted my LX with the motor drive, nicad pack, and an SMC Pentax 400/5.6. Big, heavy glass. I figured I'd use my monopod, but I absent mindedly screwed it into the nicad power pack instead of the lens' tripod mount. I think I held the camera by the lens and monopod as I walked toward the marsh, but then I used the monopod as a walking stick of sorts while I climbed the fence near the marsh. Ouch! The weight of the lens ripped the bottom plate of the motor drive free of the rest of the unit, twisting the tripod mount in the process. I sent the drive and the nicad pack to Pentax Colorado, told them what I had done and asked them to repair the pieces as necessary. They replaced the bottom plate on the motor drive and made other repairs as necessary. The bill was only $50. When I got the drive back, I shot a roll with it, but the drive indicated that the roll was finished after only 24 frames. I unloaded the roll, looked at it, saw it was a 36 and figured it had been mislabeled by Kodak. I think I subsequently noticed that there were, in fact, a dozen unexposed frames after the film was processed, but I didn't give it much thought. I didn't use the drive again for quite awhile, but when I did, it indicated rewind after about 6 frames. I wondered if I had misloaded the film, and tried the drive without film. Again, it indicated reload after just a half dozen frames or so, particularly when used in continuous mode. By this time, the warranty had almost expired. But I had other things on my mind, so I didn't send it back to Pentax. Finally, after about 11 months, I returned it to Pentax Colorado and told my story. I said I realized the warranty had expired and that I would pay for a repair if necessary. Well, a couple of weeks passed, and I didn't hear from them. I was just about to get a bit annoyed when the drive showed up in the mail. Repaired and working perfectly. No charge. I thought that was pretty darn good. - This message is from the Pentax-Discuss Mail List. To unsubscribe, go to http://www.pdml.net and follow the directions. Don't forget to visit the Pentax Users' Gallery at http://pug.komkon.org .
