[stevebrot]

But I come from a computer background and that colours my view ive seen huge unreliability in those devices, so im forced to take the jaundiced view and expect failures, as so much of the camera is now a computer.

I understand what you are saying. I though I am primarily a software developer (computers are both my tool and my target), my background includes IT operations and configuration for high availability. I guess that colours my thinking as well. I would expect some sort of graceful fail-over, but that may not be possible in a fatal condition.

Based on the reported conditions where these lock-ups occur, my intuition says that it is probably not a power issue in most cases. I suspect a low-level fault in how the on-board RAM is managed and/or a simple memory leak. The latter might be addressable by a firmware tweak. The former would probably require a rework of the hardware. There is also the possibility of deadlock between threads Time for a code review!


Steve

(...am thinking that I am glad that I don't do embedded systems...)

[SpecialK]

Anyone else with the same problem??

Not unheard of in K-5's.

[Gerdup]

I still have my K10D, K20D, K-7 and purchased the K-3 now recently. None of my other cameras did what is happening now with the K-3. Never was any firmware update necessary to "fix" any problem.

This is what I've done now:
First of all, the issue with my computer not wanting to open the SD card inserted into a data transfer USB device - it might be too old to handle the 64GB Extreme Pro card? I've tried my newer data transfer stick and photos was downloaded without any problems.

I've done another 300 shots without any freeze problems, just to test it. What I did find is that the problem might have been with the battery grip or camera body.
With the flash, body and grip switched on I did notice the following: I fired a few shots then left all the equipment on the studio table, switched on but after a minute or so I came back, picked up everything and here comes all the lights on - flash and body without me pressing any button. By squeezing firmly with my hand on the camera's grip, again without touching any button, I found that both the flash's light and the bodies light goes on and off, camera not freezing. As if there's a electrical short somewhere. By switching off the battery grip the problem is gone. And yes, I'm 100% sure that with the wedding shoot the battery grip was tightly connected to the body, as it was now with the testing.

Now I would think that if both the body and grips batteries go low the freezing might occur as there's somewhere an electrical fault or loose connection. Forgive me, I'm a farmer so I'm always looking at electrical faults when it comes to battery/electrical operated equipment.

I'll continue testing and keeping you guys posted but for now this is what I found. Again, the body, grip and SD card was bought as a unit and all of these are brand new. Only the 540 flash was part of my equipment previously - and without any problem.