[fcrespo]

hi peterh337, that is impressive. I am too electronics engineer by education, and can follow, to a certain point, your reasoning. Very interesting story of the Nokia case.

The Pentax guys are clever, no doubt. If they have not implemented a firmware fix yet, is because there are likely unacceptable side effects, or simply because it doesn't fix the problem due to reason X that we don't know.

One of the big praises of the K3 is that it is much faster than the K5 (faster processor, screen, GUI, etc). This has a cost in power, and surely we see that battery life is shorter than K5's (24% reduction according to IR review). Maybe they have gone too far, up to a point that processor crash (as you rightly suggest) is likely with a weak or almost-depleted battery. Processor crash explains not only the mirror flap, but also the camera lock, requiring remove/reinsert the battery to recover.

Now, if the K3 power system is flawed or underdesigned, what to do? A major call-back action? A firmware fix to limit camera performace? Not easy.

Another idea: does the problem occur when powering the K3 via the DC port? If the above is true, it should not. You could do time-lapse reliably then.

This is only guessing of course, but better than Pentax silence.

I could be wrong, surely. For example, why is the problem happening also with the battery grip? There should be plenty of power in that case.

[DRabbit]

Great input Peter... However, it is absolutely not caused by a low, faulty or third-party battery. That has truly been eliminated as a possibility... not that it still couldn't be power related in some regard, but it's definitely not because the battery is low or bad. The issue has been reproduced using the AC Adaptor and I, more often than not, had the issue happen within 30 minutes or so, of popping in a freshly charged genuine Pentax battery.

We also know that there was some variation of the same problem (mirror-flapping) well known with the original K5, and it's even been reported sporadically with other Pentax bodies (like the K-r). Whether it's tied to the same root cause, we just don't know... but there was a thread that suggested it might be possibly related to the aperture arm, and it seemed an interesting theory.

As for the suggestion that Pentax cannot address it publicly... I don't agree. Once they have the issue sussed out, there's no reason they shouldn't address it. There will be lots of people who never read about it, lots of people who will decide not to send the camera in until they have the problem, and some who won't see it as severe enough to send the camera in at all (as obvious with the arguers in this thread). They shouldn't do a "recall", but should handle it the way Fuji did with their XT body. If they solve it today, every serial number moving forward is clear of the issue... every serial number prior to XX will be fully covered under warranty for those that run into the issue and send the camera in. The type of good will this creates with consumers only serves as a positive... and those of us that are long-term Pentax fans will feel all the more confident buying their cameras in the future.

[Uluru]

hi peterh337, that is impressive. I am too electronics engineer by education, and can follow, to a certain point, your reasoning. Very interesting story of the Nokia case.

The Pentax guys are clever, no doubt. If they have not implemented a firmware fix yet, is because there are likely unacceptable side effects, or simply because it doesn't fix the problem due to reason X that we don't know.

One of the big praises of the K3 is that it is much faster than the K5 (faster processor, screen, GUI, etc). This has a cost in power, and surely we see that battery life is shorter than K5's (24% reduction according to IR review).

According to Fujitsu, new image processor (aka PRIME 3 in Pentax land) requires less energy than PRIME 2 from K5. Papers say 30% less. New stabilisation unit? Hard to say. Perhaps more than before. New mirror motors? Perhaps more.

But still it says nothing as the issue in question is most likely not related to power depletion. Apparently, it was created with a camera fully connected to DC as well.

Now, if the K3 power system is flawed or underdesigned, what to do? A major call-back action? A firmware fix to limit camera performace? Not easy.

Callback? You already know all cameras produced are faulty?
Firmware fix? So you already know what is the issue and that it can be solved via firmware update?

Quick answer to both ideas is no. Not so fast in prescribing any cure.

So far, not a single person reporting the issue has offered any viable explanation. Side-effects of the issue, yes, we have heard about them — at least those side-effects visible to users without proper testing equipment. Flapping is visible, sound is audible, but a big iceberg of information below the surface of user's reach, and which is visible to proper testing equipment, is unknown to users.

The root cause is far from being assessed. It is still unknown.

Thus offering any "solution" or "prescription" is not viable, nor it will solve anything. Again, it is our impulsive nature of forceful problem solving at all cost, using whatever shortcut. Best course of action is document each individual issue, assemble them in a document and send to Ricoh Imaging Japan, asking their opinion and offering user's assistance.

But if you want to kill some time before that, maybe you may move investigation a few good steps forward and get a hi-speed video camera for slow motion analysis, together with a highly sensitive camera for thermal stress analysis. Point in closely at the mirror box and start recording, carefully monitoring what is going on.

[DRabbit]

Uluru... while I agree the issue's cause hasn't yet been determined, I would simply reply to you by saying one thing...

What you suggest is Pentax/Ricoh's job.

I was on board with trying to offer my assistance to them for 4-5 months. That's a whole lot more than most users would have given them, or is even reasonable for them to expect. It is their job to figure it out. This thread attempts to collect as much relevant information as possible to assist them... beyond that, it's up to Pentax/Ricoh to figure out. It's not on us.

[howieb101]

Is this now a discussion thread or reporting cameras with issues and serial numbers? I suggest if people want to discuss rather than report a camera it belongs in a separate thread.

[DRabbit]

This is still the thread to report the issue.

However, along the way people seem to also have questions about the issue itself, so it's been impossible to keep it free of other types of posts.

[Rupert]

What you suggest is Pentax/Ricoh's job.

I'm not going to linger here in this thread, I don't have a K3 and may never have one, so I don't have a "dog in the fight". However, if Ricoh wants to retain confidence in their products they will have to correct this problem and the sooner the better, regardless of the expense. I hope they do better than Hoya did with the SDM issue, that to my knowledge has never been officially addressed by Pentax. It certainly lowered my confidence level in Pentax.
If Fuji could recall every X10 that had user complaints of "blob" highlights, and install a new sensor in them, then Ricoh should be willing to make the same effort if necessary. I would venture to guess that there were more X10s sold that there are K3s ...but they did it anyhow. That builds confidence, that creates loyalty. I hope Ricoh is up to the task and we will see what they are made of?

However, along the way people seem to also have questions about the issue itself, so it's been impossible to keep it free of other types of posts.

That is as inevitable as the sun coming up every day. All threads seem to drift into various discussions....not always a bad thing!

Being thoroughly displeased with Hoya, I am hoping Ricoh will be different, more communicative and more transparent.....like Fuji is. I have enjoyed my K5 tremendously, want to see Pentax succeed and prosper. What it takes to do that is no mystery, we all know the answer. If it is broke..FIX IT!

Best Regards!

[karro]

I second Howie's opinion and here's a suggestion: how about cleaning this thread out and moving all irrelevant posts to a new thread, or let's reuse an existing thread for that, and keep this one strictly for "UFO sightings"?

[DRabbit]

Karro... I suggested that to a moderator a while back and they didn't want to do that.

as of right now...

This is still the thread to report the mirror-flapping issue for users who run into it.

Last update to the list was yesterday, with a new report coming in on 5/7/14. The original post was updated yesterday to reflect this information.

[David&karen]

If for some reason it does turn out to be power related, could Ricoh turn out a new battery, like Nikon did with the 'a' batteries for the D4s?

David

[peterh337]

The issue could be subtly related not to how much is in the battery but to how much the camera thinks is in the battery.

Otherwise, why did I readily get the mirror flap with the Hahnel battery (every bit as good as the Pentax one, in the K5, proved over many trips with hundreds of photos taken) but not at all with the Pentax one? Both were fully and freshly charged with the Pentax charger (which is the same one for the K5 and the K3).

Sony had this issue years ago, with batteries returning duff info on the remaining energy.

Pentax might be clever and use the reported battery capacity to determine whether it is OK to operate the mechanism. Then, if different batteries report different values....

This is all relatively wild speculation. One could research it but it would take a lot of work. And the shutter count would go way up

[DRabbit]

As stated several times already, I never used anything but genuine Pentax batteries. Someone else had the issue with the AC Adaptor. It's happened to people with the grip with genuine and non-genuine batteries. It's too sporadic a problem to say that because you didn't have it happen with your Pentax battery, the Hahnel was the issue. Many others have reported all kinds of power sources when the problem occurs, and I'm 100% sure that it's not third-party batteries that cause the problem. It may be power related, but it's not related to battery brand specifically.

[mamethot]

Not sure what you mean by "batteries returning duff info" ?

To my knowledge the battery pins 1 and 3 are simply positive and negative and the camera reads the voltage (and most probably regulates it), while the center pin (not used in the K3 body) is for temperature while charging...

Again to my knowledge. If I am wrong I will be more than happy to learn more on the subject.

[peterh337]

I thought these batteries contained a micro which integrated the current going in and out, and the appliance could read the current remaining energy digitally.

Sony used to do that.

Maybe the industry has moved away from it? It has obvious potential for being dodgy (as Sony found out) because the integrator isn't going to know the internal battery leakage or its degradation with age. There is a huge amount of work being done in this area with electric cars however because just measuring the battery voltage gives you a very poor idea of how much is in it.

There are several ways to fool the system; the only way you can be sure the battery is fully charged is to fully charge it by detecting the full charge condition (depends on battery chemistry but with lithiums there is a kink in the voltage v. time trend during charging, and the battery temperature starts to rise) and then you set the digital monitoring system to "100%". But during discharge you can't tell how much is actually left - for example I have just put an obviously fake battery into a Sony laptop, which says "100% - 2.5hrs remaining" and 10 mins later it dies. £50 from Amazon; going back tomorrow. Most batteries on Ebay and Amazon are fakes.

If I can get a duff Pentax battery I will be happy to open it up and report. It is normally very obvious.

[gryhnd]

Last, but not least, inside of this thread we haven't even addressed other reliability issues with the K3. Along the way I had the camera lock up a lot more than any other camera I've ever shot with (by far). I'm talking about lockups without mirror-flapping, just silent, camera-will-not-respond, freezes that required the camera to be turned on and off several times, or the battery to be popped.

Lockup, with top screen illuminated but back screen black and no response to buttons, happened to me this weekend while shooting the Cape Cod RAGNAR relay race (again, fully charged batteries...I had just gotten started). Had to pop the grip off and the body battery out to recover. The time it took to do this and get everything back together resulted in the loss of many shots of runners making their hand offs to their teammates and said teammates' subsequent starts to their runs.