[JBox]

I have been having some freezing with my K-5 that I bought in March. (Its manufacture date is in January 2011.) However, I have reason to believe that the freezes that I am having are not the same as the freezing that has been commonly documented online. My K-5 has frozen 4 times, and only one of them was when I was shooting many frames in rapid succession (and even then I was not using the continuous shutter mode). The first 3 freezes happened with the v1.03 firmware and the last one happened with the v1.11 firmware.

In all cases:

• The battery indicated full charge, and I have no reason to believe that the indicator was wrong
• I mainly use manual focus and I think that it was in manual focus in all cases
• I was not using the flash
• I was shooting in RAW-DNG
• The exposure mode was Av (I think)

In the most recent case, today, I had just turned the camera on without taking a shot. Upon fully pressing the shutter-release, the camera froze. In the other cases as well, the freeze seems to happen right when pressing the shutter-release. The reason that I think this is that the meter values update before the shutter-release is pressed but not after. As documented elsewhere, the only way to unfreeze is to remove the battery. Other than these facts the freezes have nothing in common and I cannot reproduce them if I try. They seem to be random.

For comparison, I used a K-7 from September 2009 to March when I got the K-5, and the K-7 never froze once. However, I was using an A lens on the K-7 and upgraded to FA lenses on the K-5. The K-5 has frozen using both of the FA lenses.

So my question is: have other people had these kinds of freezes? I have seen comments in these forums to the effect of "all DSLRs freeze sometimes." So is what I am experiencing just "routine" freezing or something that I should have looked at?

[Class A]

I have seen comments in these forums to the effect of "all DSLRs freeze sometimes."

These comments are nonsense.
There are a number of DSLRs that never freeze.
I own one (K100D).

Have you checked the contacts on the lens and the lens mount? Try cleaning them gently. This is a very wild guess, but I reckon if the camera loses communication with the lens unexpectedly, it could freeze. This may be complete nonsense.

[twitch]

I've never had a freeze on either my K-x (25k+ shots) or my K-5 (1k+ shots).

[jamesm007]

I kinda know what your saying. Freezing is the most common (it seems) camera complaint (all cameras PointsAndShoot or dSLR). I owned a Kodak P880 that would do that once in a while and it went right back to Kodak for another.

Send in your K-5 for warranty repair. It should not freeze now and then; and its not normal. Its just a common (not only the K-5) complaint that needs attention.

I would strongly suggest that you play around with it and see if you can find a way to replicate it so you can tell the tech what to do to reproduce the problem. The CPU may keep track of problems for the tech, but I would not bet on it.

So don't live with it. Send it in when you feel like it (before the warranty is up of course).

Thats my advice...

[JBox]

Thanks for the replies!

I suspected that this would end-up being the situation (needing it fixed that is). I suspected the lenses as well since I also changed them soon after getting the K-5. One of them I got used and the other is refurbished, so they could be suspect. However, as I noted before, the K-5 has frozen with both of them. I did use my A lens for a while before getting the FA lenses and there was no freezing during that time (although that may not mean a lot). I will try examining the mounts and see if I can come up with anything.

Just for more information, I looked-up pictures taken when the freezes occurred to get the dates of the freezes:
1st: May 8, 2011
2nd: July 27, 2011
3rd: July 31, 2011
4th: August 7, 2011

I think that I can also add that the ISO was 200 in all cases.

[SpecialK]

https://www.pentaxforums.com/forums/pentax-k-5-forum/144709-number-freezes-si...re-1-03-a.html