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01-21-2015, 10:28 PM   #31
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QuoteOriginally posted by Tukalook Quote
Pentax K-3 , what you describe as mirror roll up , I definitely experienced the exact same issue mirror roll up , no image , a few times the hang up was so extended that I actually shut power off camera and restarted. I only had the issue happen at a recent wedding but occurred several times over a short duration , it was during this same event that ,I was so disa
ppointed with the images taken and the poor focusing of the camera.
If your camera is experiencing these symptoms, you should contact Ricoh/Pentax for warranty service.


Steve

01-21-2015, 10:32 PM   #32
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QuoteOriginally posted by jbinpg Quote
Did those experiencing poor AF do any in-camera focus adjustments before their shoots? There is a reason this feature was added to Pentax DSLRs.
A fine adjustment would affect the AF result under all conditions, not just low light. I haven't personally experienced any focussing problems in low light, but I also haven't used it a lot in low light.
01-21-2015, 10:50 PM - 1 Like   #33
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QuoteOriginally posted by btnapa Quote
User error is out. I have been shooting for too long for user error.
I have been shooting since the late 1960s, but I don't know that I would ever make a claim of inerrancy based on those 45+ years. I don't doubt that you got poor results, but your deep experience was not with your K-3 and you did not attempt the same subject with the superior Canon system that you no longer shoot with. I have several friends who shoot Canon semi-professionally and none brag about the AF system. What I generally hear is cursing. For birds in flight when shooting Canon, the general appraisal is that the lack of accuracy is balanced by the fast frame rate. Spray and pray and blame the gear at end of day.

In regards to your wedding...Were you shooting your FA Limiteds wide open? Are you aware that NO PDAF system on the market has focus sensitivity greater than f/2.8? Were you shooting AF-C? Shoot AF at wider than f/2.8, even using the center column of sensors and your keeper rate will fall. Shoot AF at wider than f/2.8 using other than the center column of sensors and you keeper rate will fall significantly. Shoot AF-C in dim light and you are asking for failure. The K-3 has exceptional capabilities in this area, but the system will be slow to acquire focus and AF-C is contraindicated. Even Nikon has trouble with this use case. A pro would have tested the room prior to the ceremony and bumped the ISO high enough to allow a narrower aperture. Lecture over. Sorry you missed your shots. It is a disappointment when that happens and it happens even to experienced photographers.

As for the slowness of the SDM motors in some Pentax lenses, I would refer you to the reviews on this site regarding focus speed. The SDM lenses are very quiet, but notoriously slow. I wish it were not so and am embarrassed for Pentax that they still don't have a speedy in-camera AF drive system.


Steve

Last edited by stevebrot; 01-21-2015 at 11:02 PM.
01-21-2015, 10:57 PM   #34
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QuoteOriginally posted by RobG Quote
A fine adjustment would affect the AF result under all conditions, not just low light. I haven't personally experienced any focussing problems in low light, but I also haven't used it a lot in low light.
This is true, though in bright light, most photographers will use a narrower aperture and have the benefit of deeper DOF. Like you, I have not had any particular problems with low light AF using my K-3 and have generally found it to be fairly impressive. My K-3 is able to acquire focus and do so quickly when I am not even able to clearly see the subject through the viewfinder. This summer I was shooting available light in a limestone cavern (Oregon Caves National Monument) and had no problem acquiring focus, though I must admit that it would have been a challenge if the subjects were moving


Steve

02-18-2015, 05:47 PM   #35
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Unless I did something with my K3, I experienced another glitch with it, one that I haven't read about anywhere online. This has happened twice so far. Both times I couldn't access the settings for WB, Drive mode, Flash mode and Custom setting using the four way controller buttons in any mode. The screen stayed black. The four way controller buttons did work fine when I tried both the Info and Menu buttons. The first time it happened I was out in the cold and I thought it had something to do with me trying to set the 2 second timer while it was in a User mode that I had forgot it was set to. I eventually gave up on trying to access the timer setting and for no reason it just worked after a while when I just thought I'd try it again before heading home. The second time it happened was indoors. I don't know if cold affects it because it was outside for about 15 minutes in a camera bag before I brought it in our local school to take photos of my son playing basketball. I eventually found the settings to change the WB in the menu after I tried removing the battery, turning it on/off multiple times and resetting the User mode I had set up previously. I used Manual mode instead of the User mode because I couldn't figure out how to change a setting (WB) in the User mode. Does anyone know of a setting that disables the four way controller buttons that I might have enabled somehow, just in case this wasn't a K3 glitch?
02-18-2015, 06:28 PM   #36
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QuoteOriginally posted by RollsUp Quote
Does anyone know of a setting that disables the four way controller buttons that I might have enabled somehow, just in case this wasn't a K3 glitch?
I'm not aware of one. I haven't experienced that issue myself.
02-18-2015, 06:37 PM   #37
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QuoteOriginally posted by RollsUp Quote
Unless I did something with my K3, I experienced another glitch with it, one that I haven't read about anywhere online. This has happened twice so far. Both times I couldn't access the settings for WB, Drive mode, Flash mode and Custom setting using the four way controller buttons in any mode. The screen stayed black. The four way controller buttons did work fine when I tried both the Info and Menu buttons. The first time it happened I was out in the cold and I thought it had something to do with me trying to set the 2 second timer while it was in a User mode that I had forgot it was set to. I eventually gave up on trying to access the timer setting and for no reason it just worked after a while when I just thought I'd try it again before heading home. The second time it happened was indoors. I don't know if cold affects it because it was outside for about 15 minutes in a camera bag before I brought it in our local school to take photos of my son playing basketball. I eventually found the settings to change the WB in the menu after I tried removing the battery, turning it on/off multiple times and resetting the User mode I had set up previously. I used Manual mode instead of the User mode because I couldn't figure out how to change a setting (WB) in the User mode. Does anyone know of a setting that disables the four way controller buttons that I might have enabled somehow, just in case this wasn't a K3 glitch?
The 4 way controller buttons have dual mode functionality. It appears your 4 way controller buttons were set to control the focus points rather than select the WB/flash/drive/custom image functions. You use the Change AF point/SD card switch button (another dual function button) located lower right of the 4 way button cluster to toggle between AF select and camera configuration mode. It screws me up all the time because I always seem to be in the wrong mode. I'm too much of a simpleton to remember what mode I'm in when I'm shooting. There is an icon in the viewfinder that indicates when focus selection mode is active but I tend to ignor it.

02-18-2015, 11:57 PM   #38
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QuoteOriginally posted by RollsUp Quote
Does anyone know of a setting that disables the four way controller buttons that I might have enabled somehow, just in case this wasn't a K3 glitch?
There is a general camera freeze issue that has been with the K-3 pretty much from day one. Many owners on this site have experienced it, myself included, but the cause/fix is unknown. I suppose it has been ignored probably because of the more vexing runaway mirror issue that had everyone's attention for so many months. It was thought at one point to be power-related, but there was no way to confirm. My last occurrence was in July of last year and I have not had it happen at all since then. (FWIW, I installed firmware v1.11 in September. There may be a connection, but I don't know.)

I don't know if your controller problems are related, but I figured I could at least throw it out there.


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02-19-2015, 06:52 AM   #39
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QuoteOriginally posted by RobG Quote
1. Every so often, the camera claims that a card isn't formatted, but it is.
Unlike my Nikons the K-3 is very sensitive to any files left "locked" on the card. The most typical situation is you pull your card out of your laptop without "ejecting" it first. This leaves the card in a less-than-perfect state and the K-3 duly lets you know (the result being the required reformat. Been there done that). I would suggest this is not a bug per se but rather a much-needed enhancement request as most other cameras don't seem to mind as much. Pentax -- are you listening?

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02-19-2015, 10:22 AM   #40
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QuoteOriginally posted by MJSfoto1956 Quote
I would suggest this is not a bug per se but rather a much-needed enhancement request as most other cameras don't seem to mind as much. Pentax -- are you listening?
The "less than perfect state" you refer to is a file system that cannot be reliably written to. As a result, it cannot be cleanly mounted by the camera or other device. The K-3's behavior is a good example of appropriate fail-over. There are perfectly good computer operating systems that will react in much the same way as the K-3 when they encounter a card with a corrupt or inconsistent file system. As for other cameras being more lenient, I don't have the cross-brand experience you enjoy, but in computerland a forced mount of a non-clean file system is considered dangerous and not data safe.

This whole issue of doing a safe unmount/eject is problematic. Unless a user has been educated on proper use of portable media, it is not intuitively obvious that you should not simply pull the card out of the device.


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02-19-2015, 11:30 AM   #41
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QuoteOriginally posted by stevebrot Quote
I don't have the cross-brand experience you enjoy, but in computerland a forced mount of a non-clean file system is considered dangerous and not data safe.
well, I haven't fully tested it but I know that if I pull out my SD card from my Macbook Pro and shove it into a Nikon it reads/writes the data just fine. If I do the same with a Pentax it complains. This test is repeatable. What I suspect will happen (I haven't tested it) with the a "rejected" Pentax SD is that I will be able to remount in into my Mac with no problems whatsoever.

So perhaps "less than perfect" is somewhat like the Princess and the Pea: perhaps Pentax is merely being "overly sensitive" (even if they are doing things "by the book")

YMMV

Michael
02-19-2015, 03:24 PM   #42
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QuoteOriginally posted by MJSfoto1956 Quote
Unlike my Nikons the K-3 is very sensitive to any files left "locked" on the card. The most typical situation is you pull your card out of your laptop without "ejecting" it first. This leaves the card in a less-than-perfect state and the K-3 duly lets you know (the result being the required reformat. Been there done that). I would suggest this is not a bug per se but rather a much-needed enhancement request as most other cameras don't seem to mind as much. Pentax -- are you listening?
This is a different issue, although I haven't experienced it myself. The issue I had with the erroneous warnings about unformatted cards has gone away since I've been using identical cards in both slots. I'm pretty sure my earlier conclusion was correct - if you use the mode where JPG goes to one card and RAW to the other, the cards need to be identical. If they aren't, the camera can't deal with the different write speeds. I don't imagine this would be an issue if the mode is to fill one card then the next, because only one card at a time is being written to.
02-19-2015, 03:51 PM   #43
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QuoteOriginally posted by RobG Quote
if you use the mode where JPG goes to one card and RAW to the other, the cards need to be identical. If they aren't, the camera can't deal with the different write speeds.
I have different different speeds in my two SD slots -- in fact I have a 16Gb FluCard in slot 2 (JPEGs go here) vs. a 64Gb high-speed card in slot 1 (RAWs go here). Perhaps the issue only rears its ugly head when one of the cards is "sub par"?

YMMV

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02-19-2015, 04:53 PM   #44
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QuoteOriginally posted by MJSfoto1956 Quote
I have different different speeds in my two SD slots -- in fact I have a 16Gb FluCard in slot 2 (JPEGs go here) vs. a 64Gb high-speed card in slot 1 (RAWs go here). Perhaps the issue only rears its ugly head when one of the cards is "sub par"? YMMV
Interesting. All the cards I'm using are class 10 with transfer rates that ought to be easily sufficient for still photography, and most are adequate for HD video. As you say, YMMV. All I can say is that since I used paired cards, I've had no issues.
02-19-2015, 07:30 PM   #45
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QuoteOriginally posted by RobG Quote
if you use the mode where JPG goes to one card and RAW to the other, the cards need to be identical. If they aren't, the camera can't deal with the different write speeds. I don't imagine this would be an issue if the mode is to fill one card then the next, because only one card at a time is being written to.
Not my experience.
Slot 1 (RAW): Lexar Platinum II SDHC 32GB (Class 10, 30 MB/s, U1)
Slot 2 (JPEG): Sandisk Ultra SDHC 16 GB (Class 10, 30 MB/s, U1)
Note that both cards are similarly spec'ed. I also tried an old 2 GB Sandisk Ultra II SDSC in slot 2, thinking I might get different results, but no. It worked just fine.


Steve
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