[PentaMiCL]

When I was shooting the pier at Ocean Beach San Diego, I swapped my batteries and everything got reset (all settings, date and time).

I think I powered off the camera before swapping the batteries, but I am not 100% sure. The other concern is that one of the batteries in the swapped pair was a third party cheap battery.

Do any of you know if there is a known issue of K-70 resetting when swapping batteries, for instance, while leaving the power on, or when using third party batteries, etc?

Or, is there anything else that you can think of? Thanks in advance!

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[pryorkshire]

You say "one of the batteries in the swapped pair". My K70 only has a single
D L190 battery. Can you clarify what batteries you are using.

[PentaMiCL]

You say "one of the batteries in the swapped pair". My K70 only has a single
D L190 battery. Can you clarify what batteries you are using.

One is a factory DL190 and the other is a DL190-compatible third party battery. I pulled out a factory one and inserted a compatible one, or vice versa.

[AstroDave]

when swapping batteries, for instance, while leaving the power on

This can't be a good idea!

[gump]

I rotate using Pentax, Watson and DSTE, and have had no problems. All battery replacement is done power off.

[Peter Pen]

I have been using different kinds of 3rd party batteries for 20 years in Pentax DSLRs (including k70 now) and have never had this issue with them. I would strongly suggest the leaving it powered on when you disconnect the battery is the cause.

[photoptimist]

Had you recently shot some images when you did the battery swap?

The camera keeps saving images even AFTER you flip the switch off and may take quite some time to clear the buffer and actually turn off. If you yank the batteries while it's saving data, there's certainly a chance of data loss and corruption that could cause a reset.

(Always wait for the blinking light "saving data" light to go off before swapping.)

[ramseybuckeye]

There have been few time that I changed a battery without turning the camera off, but no problems occurred. It sounds as though the internal battery (that I have only heard of) may have failed. That would be very unusual, but not unheard of.

[PentaMiCL]

Had you recently shot some images when you did the battery swap?

The camera keeps saving images even AFTER you flip the switch off and may take quite some time to clear the buffer and actually turn off. If you yank the batteries while it's saving data, there's certainly a chance of data loss and corruption that could cause a reset.

(Always wait for the blinking light "saving data" light to go off before swapping.)

This might be it. Thanks, I will look out for this.

---------- Post added 01-19-20 at 02:20 AM ----------

There have been few time that I changed a battery without turning the camera off, but no problems occurred. It sounds as though the internal battery (that I have only heard of) may have failed. That would be very unusual, but not unheard of.

If not the above, this could be it. If this is the case the symptom should repeat itself more and more frequently so I'd know then.

Thank you for the advice!

[JohnX]

Cameras have onboard batteries/capacitors that provide sufficient power to the motherboard component that stores setting and time data. The onboard batteries are charged by the changeable batteries. The onboard power storage has sufficient reserve to ensure that memory contents aren't lost when you change the main changeable battery.

The onboard batteries/caps don't last for ever. Once they've died it's the changeable battery that becomes the main source of power for the mobo data memory .

Looks like your onboard power storage has failed, so you'll have to reset time, date, etc every time you change the changeable battery.

The repair would be a new motherboard, which would cost more than the camera is worth.

[PentaMiCL]

The onboard batteries/caps don't last for ever.

Hi, thanks for the comment. I'm sure that's a possibility, but I doubt that's the case here. I can take out the battery and put it back in with no issues; I can leave the battery out for much longer than I did when the incident occurred without any issues. Besides, it's a K-70. It's way too early for the on-board battery to die for a product from such a great company as Pentax.

Now I'm pretty sure that the battery that was in the body "right before" the incident was the third party one -- so, related to this, there might be a small chance that the third party battery is somehow faulty and drains the onboard battery -- hence, the reset when I pulled out that one.

[JohnX]

I guess the test would be to use only the Pentax battery in a series of 'battery in/battery out' operations, followed by the third party one, and see if the camera loses settings again during the third party battery sequence.

The thought that the changeable battery is drawing power down from the onboard one is interesting, but I'd have thought that the changeable battery is isolated from the rest of the camera when the power button is off?

That said, I seem to recall that some users reported issues with the K3II main battery drain as it appeared the GPS remained active even though the camera was switched off, so maybe modern Pentax cameras maintain some sort of connection to the main battery even when in the off position?

I hope you find a simple, zero cost, answer to your problem.

[PentaMiCL]

I guess the test would be to use only the Pentax battery in a series of 'battery in/battery out' operations, followed by the third party one, and see if the camera loses settings again during the third party battery sequence.

The thought that the changeable battery is drawing power down from the onboard one is interesting, but I'd have thought that the changeable battery is isolated from the rest of the camera when the power button is off?

That said, I seem to recall that some users reported issues with the K3II main battery drain as it appeared the GPS remained active even though the camera was switched off, so maybe modern Pentax cameras maintain some sort of connection to the main battery even when in the off position?

I hope you find a simple, zero cost, answer to your problem.

This all just guess work, but here's what I thought might be the cause, related to your advice. When using the faulty (hypothetical) third party battery, the voltage or something is slightly off and thus the onboard battery drains while the camera is in use. The setting etc., remains there as long as there is any juice left in the external battery, but when I swapped the batteries, I remember the external battery being completely depleted (the red battery icon was flashing before the camera shut off). In this case and only in this case, because of the faulty (hypothetical) low voltage (or something) third party battery, the onboard battery has zero juice left when pulling out the external battery to swap with a new one.

At any rate, I'm fine since then regardless of the battery I am using, so rather than try to figure out the cause, I'll stick to not depleting the third party battery completely for now.

Thank you all for all the advice!

[photoptimist]

Regarding the battery-camera connections: in almost all modern electronic equipment (include Pentax cameras), some part of the circuitry is always being powered. The on-off "switch" of the camera does not actually connect/disconnect the battery. Instead the switch sends a signal to a power management chip that either triggers the power-up sequence (i.e., boot the CPU, load firmware, turn-on displays, etc.) or triggers the power-down sequence (i.e., save any buffered images, save settings data, etc.). The fact that the on-off switch only controls some software is why the camera can lock-up and refuse to turn-off even if the user flips the switch.

Generally speaking, running any LiIon battery down to red is both bad for the battery's health and likely to cause camera glitches (such as the one you experienced). Fully draining the battery can damage it, lowering its ability to store power, and shortening its total life span. Operating the camera on a near-depleted battery (especially one damaged by earlier cycles of full depletion) can cause glitches when the camera demands more power and the battery fails to provide it. Digital circuits (the CPU, RAM, and flash memory systems) can do very weird things when operating on inadequate power. A lot of battery-powered digital devices have ways of checking for memory corruption and automatically reseting the device if something went wrong.

[PentaMiCL]

Regarding the battery-camera connections: in almost all modern electronic equipment (include Pentax cameras), some part of the circuitry is always being powered. The on-off "switch" of the camera does not actually connect/disconnect the battery. Instead the switch sends a signal to a power management chip that either triggers the power-up sequence (i.e., boot the CPU, load firmware, turn-on displays, etc.) or triggers the power-down sequence (i.e., save any buffered images, save settings data, etc.). The fact that the on-off switch only controls some software is why the camera can lock-up and refuse to turn-off even if the user flips the switch.

Generally speaking, running any LiIon battery down to red is both bad for the battery's health and likely to cause camera glitches (such as the one you experienced). Fully draining the battery can damage it, lowering its ability to store power, and shortening its total life span. Operating the camera on a near-depleted battery (especially one damaged by earlier cycles of full depletion) can cause glitches when the camera demands more power and the battery fails to provide it. Digital circuits (the CPU, RAM, and flash memory systems) can do very weird things when operating on inadequate power. A lot of battery-powered digital devices have ways of checking for memory corruption and automatically reseting the device if something went wrong.

Thank you again for the detailed explanation. I think I'm onto something now. I was running a third party quirky battery (rather common symptom of jumping from half full to empty fairly quickly) on fumes, which led to running the system on insufficient voltage, and when I pulled the battery out without shutting down the system fully, boom... the reset kicked in to save me from being left with a bricked camera. I'll make it a habit to not deplete the batteries completely, and at least to confirm the completion of the shutdown process before pulling out the battery.