I had this happen with my 09 SLs about 3 weeks ago. Consensus was that is was a seal packing up, and that I could carry on riding them but they would start losing performance.
Got them serviced by the LBS who replaced all the seals etc… and serviced the motion control and that fixed it. They also ride alot better, you tend not to notice as things detoriate slowly over time.
My LBS charged £60 for a service, £18 for a the RS seal kit and £21 for the motion control kit.
If I'd know it was going to cost all that I would have probably bought a cheap set of 2010 reba's from merlin (sold out now) and sold on the reba's saying they needed a service….
(someone will be along telling you it's simple to do yourself in a minute, but that's for people who are mechanically competant, which I'm not!)
EDIT – can't see your pic's at work, you should have a little blue top cap with 'gate' written on it.