Recommendation for Pentax lens repair?

<p>I have a Pentax 43mm Limited that I bought in 2007. Beautiful lens. I do almost exclusively street shooting these days and have been using a 35 and 21 for the last two years. I kept the 43 in its original leather bag, inside a camera bag. </p>

<p>I recently took out the 43 to use it again (I have K5 and K5iis bodies) and I could not get it to focus any closer than almost 6 feet. It should have a minimum distance of about 1.5 ft. I looked at it and it seemed as if the manual focus ring was bound up. Being the impatient gorilla that I am, I decide to set it to manual focus and move the focus ring past the point where it was bound up. It worked at first, and then I realized that the housing that holds the front element (I do not know the correct term) had moved out way beyond from where it should be (to the point that there is actually a small gap between this housing and the main body of the lens) and the focus ring is completely bound up.</p>

<p>I do not want to write off this lens and I'm looking for recommendations on where to send it for repair, if it can be repaired. Ricoh/Pentax? Or?</p>

<p>Thanks for any suggestions.</p>

<p>Steve</p>

<p> </p>

<p>I recently had KEH repair my DA* 60-250 and they did a good job. Previously I used Precision for my K-1 body and found KEH was much nicer to work with and cheaper too. </p>

<p><a href="http://www.pentaxs.com/index.html">Eric Hendrickson</a> can certainly work on that lens. He repaired my FA 20-35 a few years ago. But I think screw-drive-only lenses may be the newest ones he can work on.</p>

 

<p>Eric is great. If he can do it go to him first! I didn't realize he could work on those. </p>

<p>Good recommendations so far, although I have personally had bad experiences with Eric Hendrickson, he should be able to fix this. Avoid the authorized Pentax repair facility (Precision) at all costs. I can point you to several horror stories about them.</p>

<p>Thank you all! I have heard of Eric Hendrickson as well so I will give him a try. I appreciate the advice.</p>