[crossmr]

Received my K-30 a couple days ago. Took a few shots at home to make sure all was okay and headed out today. it was around -15 and windy by the river. I took several shots and things seemed okay and then after one shot I went to zoom in. Nothing. took off my glove to zoom it again, nada, tried a different picture. Nothing.
started and stopped the review process and still nothing. Then tried to alter the aperture since I was shooting Av and nothing. The aperture wouldn't adjust.
I gave it a warm air blow, nothing, then turned it on and off, and it came around. The rest of the shooting, another 45 minutes maybe, seemed to go okay. Should I be concerned about this? Living in Korea, ordered it from B&H (though not directly through a mail forwarding service) and hadn't yet sent in for my international warranty card.

I'd have to have to ship it back to them or something for an exchange.

[LeDave]

I would say make sure your contacts are clean, take a microfiber cloth and rub the contacts around the mount. Then make sure your lens is properly mounted all the way so that the contacts are touching. One time I didn't have it all the way screwed in, the SDM contact wasn't touching the one on the camera and it didn't AF. Also make sure the battery is fully charged for your K-30.

[crossmr]

This wasn't a lens issue. The dial on the back of the unit just stopped functioning suddenly for anything it was supposed to do. Zoom a reviewed picture, alter the aperture (or whatever else depending on your mode)
restarting it, it was fine and seems to be fine since then. Everything else on the camera was fine. I could zoom, take pictures, scroll through the pictures themselves, change all the other stuff, it was just like that dial died.

Battery was fully charged minus about 20 pictures.

[LeDave]

May I ask what lens your using? Also were you shooting in celcius or ferenheit
-15?

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Last edited by LeDave; 01-05-2013 at 01:57 AM.

[crossmr]

celsius
At that time I was using the Tamron 70-300mm 4.0-5.6 macro alphabet soup lens
It was -2 according to the weather, but there was a heavy wind by the river which would have driven the temperature way down, I'm guessing around -15 based on the way the weather has felt and been reported the last few days. Walking up away from the river a few blocks and the temperature felt much more like the -2 they claimed. I've shot with my K-M in similar temperatures and never had any issues like this. A simple restart cleared it up, and it hasn't happened again. It was very early in the shoot and after restarting it was fine for another 45 minute so and seems okay now.

[SteveB]

Definitely sounds like either lens contacts or battery/battery contacts. The AF takes a huge surge of current, so any dodgy contacts and anything could happen.

[crossmr]

Definitely sounds like either lens contacts or battery/battery contacts. The AF takes a huge surge of current, so any dodgy contacts and anything could happen.

Didn't happen during the AF.. it happened when I went to review a picture and only the dial on the back died, battery still showed full everything else worked

[maltfalc]

by "warm air blow" i assume you mean that you breathed on your camera to try to warm it up? that's a great way to ruin a camera, though hopefully the k-30's weather sealing prevented any damage. also, wind doesn't actually make it colder. the wind chill effect only affects living things and how low it takes your camera to drop to the ambient temperature. as far as your camera was concerned, it was -2, not -15. did you air out your gear when you first stepped outside, or did you have it in a camera bag full of rapidly cooling warm, moist indoor air?

[jbinpg]

Just a little pedantic rant - windchill only determines the rate of heat loss from an object, not the ambient temperature. So if you have an ambient temperature of -2C, that is what the temperature really is. However, the more exposed an object and the higher the windchill, the object will lose heat faster until it reaches equilibrium with the ambient temperature. End rant.

Jack

[crossmr]

by "warm air blow" i assume you mean that you breathed on your camera to try to warm it up? that's a great way to ruin a camera, though hopefully the k-30's weather sealing prevented any damage. also, wind doesn't actually make it colder. the wind chill effect only affects living things and how low it takes your camera to drop to the ambient temperature. as far as your camera was concerned, it was -2, not -15. did you air out your gear when you first stepped outside, or did you have it in a camera bag full of rapidly cooling warm, moist indoor air?

I had it out for around 10 minutes before I started taking pictures, and the air in my apartment is much less humid than the air outside.

[maltfalc]

the air in my apartment is much less humid than the air outside.

relative humidity or absolute humidity?

[crossmr]

relative humidity or absolute humidity?

30% inside at 20C, 80% outside at -2
Nothing particularly moist about the air in my home, and regardless I had it out for about 10 minutes before I turned it on.
So again:
is there anything to worry about that would have caused that dial to stop functioning but be fine after a restart?
It's a brand new camera, so I haven't had a chance to put it through much yet to see if there were issues.

Today it fires up and the dial works fine (inside) if it was likely a one time glitch then I won't really worry about it.

[maltfalc]

30% inside at 20C, 80% outside at -2
Nothing particularly moist about the air in my home, and regardless I had it out for about 10 minutes before I turned it on.
So again:
is there anything to worry about that would have caused that dial to stop functioning but be fine after a restart?
It's a brand new camera, so I haven't had a chance to put it through much yet to see if there were issues.

Today it fires up and the dial works fine (inside) if it was likely a one time glitch then I won't really worry about it.

ok, so you had 20c air with 30% relative humidity trapped in your camera when you stepped outside and let it cool down for 10 minutes without doing anything that would have flushed that moisture out of your camera. from 2c to -2c that moisture would have begun condensing out of the air onto the camera's circuitry, some of which is powered up whether or not the camera is turned on. no way to know if that's what caused the glitch, but it's still a good idea to zoom your lens in and out a few times when you first step outside to help flush the warm air out of your camera before it cools down.

[crossmr]

ok, so you had 20c air with 30% relative humidity trapped in your camera when you stepped outside and let it cool down for 10 minutes without doing anything that would have flushed that moisture out of your camera. from 2c to -2c that moisture would have begun condensing out of the air onto the camera's circuitry, some of which is powered up whether or not the camera is turned on. no way to know if that's what caused the glitch, but it's still a good idea to zoom your lens in and out a few times when you first step outside to help flush the warm air out of your camera before it cools down.

Actually I changed the lens out side before this happened.
walked the 10 minutes down to the river, took the camera out, walked a bit more, it was about 10 more minutes before i turned it on, took a couple pictures with the 28-72 and then switched it out for the 70-300. It was after about 20-30 pictures on the 70-300 that i noticed the issue. I had altered the f-stop on the 70-300 after a half a dozen pictures so it was working at that time.
Then I went to check a picture and at that time i noticed the dial not working. I guess its possible condensation got to it later, but i would have expected the greatest condensation to occur at the beginning.

[BurningChrome]

I've used my K-30 in -20C ambient temp (closer to -30C with windchill) without any problems other than fingers getting too numb to operate the camera. I did not remove or change the lens at any point since I only have an 18-135 WR.