[G_Money]

Since upgrading to 1.02 I seem to have lost the ability to use digital preview when using my AF540 flash. The shutter trips, the flash fires and I see an image for a fraction of a second, then only a dark screen with the hourglass. This happens with either of two AF540s or an AF360 I have. If I turn the flash off, the preview works fine. If I mount a Nikon SB-25 everything is fine. It only happens when using a Pentax flash. I was able to make it work properly briefly by mapping the RAW/FX button to a digital preview, but as of this morning that isn't possible any more. It seems to be somewhat random. If I try to take a photo using the flash, everything is fine. This only seems to affect the digital preview, which I like to use for a quick histogram check. I can live without the feature, I'll just have to make an exposure to check. Can anyone else make this happen?

[dgaies]

Since upgrading to 1.02 I seem to have lost the ability to use digital preview when using my AF540 flash. The shutter trips, the flash fires and I see an image for a fraction of a second, then only a dark screen with the hourglass. This happens with either of two AF540s or an AF360 I have. If I turn the flash off, the preview works fine. If I mount a Nikon SB-25 everything is fine. It only happens when using a Pentax flash. I was able to make it work properly briefly by mapping the RAW/FX button to a digital preview, but as of this morning that isn't possible any more. It seems to be somewhat random. If I try to take a photo using the flash, everything is fine. This only seems to affect the digital preview, which I like to use for a quick histogram check. I can live without the feature, I'll just have to make an exposure to check. Can anyone else make this happen?

I just threw the 540 on the K-5 (v 1.02) and tried digital preview with the flash on and it seemed to work fine. Granted, I had actually never used digital preview before now, but it seems to work the same with and without the flash on. It takes a picture, displays it on the LCD and gives you the option (I assume) of writing it to memory using the AE-L button.

[bobell69]

Since upgrading to 1.02 I seem to have lost the ability to use digital preview when using my AF540 flash. The shutter trips, the flash fires and I see an image for a fraction of a second, then only a dark screen with the hourglass. This happens with either of two AF540s or an AF360 I have. If I turn the flash off, the preview works fine. If I mount a Nikon SB-25 everything is fine. It only happens when using a Pentax flash. I was able to make it work properly briefly by mapping the RAW/FX button to a digital preview, but as of this morning that isn't possible any more. It seems to be somewhat random. If I try to take a photo using the flash, everything is fine. This only seems to affect the digital preview, which I like to use for a quick histogram check. I can live without the feature, I'll just have to make an exposure to check. Can anyone else make this happen?

Just a question have you tried turning off the camera and the flash and then turning them back on again. Sometimes I have problems with my K10d that are similar and I find a simple cold reboot makes a difference.

[G_Money]

Just a question have you tried turning off the camera and the flash and then turning them back on again. Sometimes I have problems with my K10d that are similar and I find a simple cold reboot makes a difference.

Yes, the only way to get the camera out of the eternal hourglass mode is to power it off. Further fiddling has shown that this is a P-TTL issue. My Sigma ring flash (P-TTL) behaves the same way. Knowing that those old Nikon flashes worked fine in A-mode, I tried setting my AF540 the same way. It worked!! So the problem seems to be something about P-TTL flashes.

I went back to my dealer today to show them the problem, and because I purchased my camera 30 days ago they were willing to exchange it for a new one. I had the 1.02 update on a card and we updated the firmware at the store and confirmed that the preview worked with the flash. However a few hours later it was misbehaving again. And yet now, it is working fine. I hate these mysteries.

[glanglois]

8.75MB/s sounds a bit slow, so I did a little test. I ripped off 24 raw pictures and timed the whole sequence from that I pressed the shutter until the busy lamp had gone out.

I still have the 1.01 firmware, and I used a 30MB/s card.

The pictures takes up 578MB on the card.
The camera was done writing after 34 seconds, that is 17MB/s written to the card.

Would you please identify the card by manufacturer and model?

As many know, there are plenty of cards, even new Sandisk cards, that have asymmetrical speeds, e.g., 30 MBps read and perhaps 10-15 MBps write speeds.

They will be advertised as 30 MBps cards (referring to read) but it's the write speed we're concerned about here.

[Gimbal]

Would you please identify the card by manufacturer and model?

As many know, there are plenty of cards, even new Sandisk cards, that have asymmetrical speeds, e.g., 30 MBps read and perhaps 10-15 MBps write speeds.

They will be advertised as 30 MBps cards (referring to read) but it's the write speed we're concerned about here.

It was a SanDisk Extreme 30MB/s, where 30MB/s refers to both read and write speed as far as I know.

And the calculated speed of 17MB/s is of course an average speed. I don't know if the camera pumps out the data at a continuous rate of 17MB/s or push it out at an even higher speed intermittent and doing some thinking in between.

[EyeofmyPentax]

This 17MB/s could still be the limitation of the write speed of the SD card. I have tested 20 MB/s and 30 MB/s Sandisk 8GB cards with a utility called 'h2testw_1.4' and both had write speeds of 14.3 MB/s and read speeds of 18.6 MB/s using 200 MB blocks. So Gimbal's data is in this ball park and is indicating that the K-5 can write at that speed. The question is, did the new firmware increase this capability and what the actual maximum speed is. UHS-I SDXC cards have a top speed of 104 MB/s and UHS-II cards are spec'd at 314 MB/s, while the fastest SDHC cards have top speeds of 50 MB/s. It needs to be determined if the K-5 can get even close to fast SDHC cards in write speed. So the advantage of the new SDXC cards will most likely be limited to the increased storage capacity, which could be of interest for longer duration video recording, if the sensor cooperates and doesn't heat up and gets damaged (i.e. burns out).

[RonHendriks1966]

8.75MB/s sounds a bit slow, so I did a little test. I ripped off 24 raw pictures and timed the whole sequence from that I pressed the shutter until the busy lamp had gone out.

I still have the 1.01 firmware, and I used a 30MB/s card.

The pictures takes up 578MB on the card.
The camera was done writing after 34 seconds, that is 17MB/s written to the card.

That is what I experienced (maybe even a little faster up to 18,5 Mb/s on my classe 10 PQ1 card). I do quit often shoot in a burst DNG's and it's just waiting and waiting with these large files. The K-7 had the same write speed.

For this you still need the fastest cards classe 10 or else you don't even make these speeds.

For a next generation Pentax should probably design a new computerlayout: faster memory (its now DDR2 RAM) and faster CPU to consume and set aside all those data faster.

Has anyone used a SDXC card 64 GB (on German site from Pentax is stated for the 645D that that is the maximum cardsize).?

[secateurs]

I have tested 20 MB/s and 30 MB/s Sandisk 8GB cards with a utility called 'h2testw_1.4' and both had write speeds of 14.3 MB/s and read speeds of 18.6 MB/s using 200 MB blocks.

Wouldn't a better test for our application be smaller blocks? Say 12-30MB blocks to simulate file sizes?

[RonHendriks1966]

Just did a test, that should bring it all up. Tested it with Jpg and RAW.

Basic test:
1) With hood on/off, 1/250, iso80, shooting for 15 and 60 seconds. Both wil end with a full buffer and the difference is the processing or writespeedlimit to be reached in those 45 seconds.
2) No Hood, 1/250, iso5000, RAW only to make big files. Again 15 and 60 seconds.

Jpeg:
- Well somehow the with hood on the files are very small but the camera is not making more pics as to be ecspected. This was tested before for running one star quality Jpeg's at 7 fps endlessly. There is some other limitation for this then writingspeed! Even with no hood on writingspeed is under 11 MB/s.

RAW:
- At iso 80 files are not very big with the hood on, some just under 10 Mb. The difference is 100 versus 39 RAW files giving 586 MB to write away in 45 seconds -> 13 Mb/s
- At iso 5000 files are uge, almost 30 Mb for a single file with no hood on. In 15 sec. the camera took 31 RAW that where 920 Mb and after 52 seconds the red light was out, giving a filewrite off 17,7 MB/s including all processing. In 60 seconds the K-5 took 58 RAW giving 1,736 Gb of filesspace to fill. The difference of 27 files giving 816 MB to write in 45 seconds -> 18,1 Mb/s

I think that is the limitation of the K-5 or my card or the combination. The card is a classe 10 32Gb PQ1 card, and writemax according to the manufacture is 24,5 Mb/s (for what it's word since I haven't tested it myself) with 30 Mb/s readspeed.

So untill someone else wil test this, with a SanDisc card or an SDXC card in my opinion the max writespeed for the K-5 is (just under) 18,5 Mb/s

[Kunzite]

The v1.02 firmware from Pentax Japan's website is different from the initial version.
I haven't installed it, so I can't tell the internal version - but from just a quick binary comparison, there are quite a few bits changed

[dlacouture]

Holy schamolly, you're right, the firmware was silently updated, and is now v1.02.21.10 (the official version was v1.02.21.07)...

[Spag]

Well I just installed it, and the bug with the internal flash on in live-view (shutter deactivated, see this thread) is now FIXED (in my camera at least).

Thanks Pentax!

[Kunzite]

Holy schamolly, you're right, the firmware was silently updated, and is now v1.02.21.10 (the official version was v1.02.21.07)...

Yes, in fact the internal version is included in clear so it's easy to see it even without installing the firmware.

[Mistral75]

Yes, in fact the internal version is included in clear so it's easy to see it even without installing the firmware.

Where are you seeing the "internal version"?