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09-13-2019, 03:11 PM   #31
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QuoteOriginally posted by Kerrowdown Quote
No not all, just thinking if I ever did lose power all on the K1... it would be "Goodnight Vienna".

That having been said... it's not likely to happen to me, with twin batteries (grip) and that the fact mine are purely used for metering, they last absolutely for ages.

Least with LX you could still continue shooting, with a broad range of mechanical shutter speeds, but I can't ever remember that happening to me either.

So basically I'm just havering away with inane drivel...
You don't actually take photos with the K1? That's an expensive light meter!

09-13-2019, 04:13 PM - 1 Like   #32
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QuoteOriginally posted by RobG Quote
I have a number of batteries which I use on both the K5iis and K3. One of them has always been a bit odd in terms of charge. It seems to drop to a single bar on the camera battery indicator quite quickly, but if you turn the camera off and on, it comes back to two bars. I (unfortunately) had this battery in the camera today when I had the chance for some very close up photos of a Platypus. The camera was set to give priority to the shutter over achieving AF lock, but many times I half depressed the shutter and nothing happened, or fully depressed the shutter release and nothing happened. I'm pretty sure that I wasn't inside the minimum focal distance of the DFA 150-450. Regardless though, the shutter should have released because it had priority. I was using the K3 (as I generally do).

Has anyone experienced a Pentax DSLR behaving erratically when the battery has a low charge, or had a particular battery that caused erratic behaviour? I did get some good photos today, but I also missed a lot because the camera refused to focus or release the shutter at certain times.
To answer the question in a word, yes.

I forget now if it was the K5 or K7 but I had a low battery, and at just the right voltage that the camera would still work, but the thumb wheel function became erratic when zooming in and out when viewing photos.

The battery depleted threshold was set too far below the sensitivity functional threshold of the encoder / contact input for the thumb wheel leading to very erratic zooming in and out. Normally one click on the thumb wheel was not one step in magnification but full zoom in or out. I can’t recall whether autofocus worked or not by that point, I just changed batteries
09-13-2019, 11:12 PM   #33
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QuoteOriginally posted by RobG Quote
You don't actually take photos with the K1? That's an expensive light meter!
Aye but it’s a good one...
09-15-2019, 03:15 AM   #34
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Unfortunately I brought the faulty one on this trip. it is discharging much faster than the one I'm using today.

10-01-2019, 02:50 PM   #35
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QuoteOriginally posted by JohnX Quote
Surely it would make more sense to just dispose of it? No point in keeping on using something you can't trust.
Well, i had the same problem with a battery i hadn't used for a year, and wasn't fully charged. Went out in below freezing temperatures, and the camera started acting up as the tread starter described. Didnt trust the battery for a few months, but it never failed again after that. Just recharged it and use it regularly.

The safest would bee to dispose of it, but it might not be necessary either.
10-01-2019, 06:07 PM   #36
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QuoteOriginally posted by dan.a.nesheim Quote
Well, i had the same problem with a battery i hadn't used for a year, and wasn't fully charged. Went out in below freezing temperatures, and the camera started acting up as the tread starter described. Didnt trust the battery for a few months, but it never failed again after that. Just recharged it and use it regularly.

The safest would bee to dispose of it, but it might not be necessary either.
Thanks! I'll have to order a new battery.
10-02-2019, 01:30 AM - 1 Like   #37
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I have had issues as well with faulty batteries and camera behavior.

10-02-2019, 04:06 AM - 1 Like   #38
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QuoteOriginally posted by RobG Quote
I have a number of batteries which I use on both the K5iis and K3. One of them has always been a bit odd in terms of charge. It seems to drop to a single bar on the camera battery indicator quite quickly, but if you turn the camera off and on, it comes back to two bars. I (unfortunately) had this battery in the camera today when I had the chance for some very close up photos of a Platypus. The camera was set to give priority to the shutter over achieving AF lock, but many times I half depressed the shutter and nothing happened, or fully depressed the shutter release and nothing happened. I'm pretty sure that I wasn't inside the minimum focal distance of the DFA 150-450. Regardless though, the shutter should have released because it had priority. I was using the K3 (as I generally do).

Has anyone experienced a Pentax DSLR behaving erratically when the battery has a low charge, or had a particular battery that caused erratic behaviour? I did get some good photos today, but I also missed a lot because the camera refused to focus or release the shutter at certain times.
I've had a K-m for a year and i can confirm that a bad power supply can result in very weird behavior. (bear in mind that the K-m works with AA batteries).
As for my K-5 sometimes looks like the camera tends to ignore me if it runs low on battery, but i thought it was just me. Good to know this actually happens.

I'd just get a new battery and toss the odd one.

[EDIT] I've seen you did mention the SD writing thing. If the buffer is full, yes, it shits itself, but only as long as theres no room available. As long as there's one free "slot" i can take another pic.
10-02-2019, 04:24 AM   #39
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QuoteOriginally posted by CapitanXeon Quote
I'd just get a new battery and toss the odd one.

[EDIT] I've seen you did mention the SD writing thing. If the buffer is full, yes, it shits itself, but only as long as theres no room available. As long as there's one free "slot" i can take another pic.
Thanks for the reply! I'll certainly get a new battery - I should probably be please that I haven't had to replace one before now. The dodgy one may be from the K5iis. The buffering behaviour is very frustrating when you have an opportunity to catch a rare animal like a Platypus being cooperative. The other thing which I've done with my "birds" user setting is to turn off things like noise reduction to ensure that the camera isn't busy processing the images rather than just storing them. I'd be tempted to shoot only raw, but I find it easier to edit jpegs from the camera to make images to post on the internet than to work with RAW.

I'm a bit surprised that the camera can't write to the SD card at the same time as doing AF for another shot. In these days where even mobile phones have multicore CPUs, I'd have thought that different cores could be processing different tasks, or have a dedicated CPU for processing and storing images and another for AF and capture. If the camera does have a multicore CPU, it looks like the threading isn't independent enough (a bit like how it's still possible for disk operations to bring Windows 10 on an 8 core processor to a complete halt).
10-02-2019, 05:35 AM   #40
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QuoteOriginally posted by RobG Quote
I'm a bit surprised that the camera can't write to the SD card at the same time as doing AF for another shot. In these days where even mobile phones have multicore CPUs, I'd have thought that different cores could be processing different tasks, or have a dedicated CPU for processing and storing images and another for AF and capture. If the camera does have a multicore CPU, it looks like the threading isn't independent enough (a bit like how it's still possible for disk operations to bring Windows 10 on an 8 core processor to a complete halt).
At the end that's caused by the entire stack, the disk controller firmware and the operating system as well expects that the disk is brand new. Every deviation causes the system to freak out, and an unreadable bit will cause an infinite loop of "i want to read this AAAAAAA". It might be a firmware thing as well, but AFAIK, my K5 (not K5ii) doesn't exhibit that behavior. Maybe something changed between both on firmware terms about SD card and buffer management?
10-02-2019, 06:38 AM   #41
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QuoteOriginally posted by RobG Quote
.........

I'm a bit surprised that the camera can't write to the SD card at the same time as doing AF for another shot. .........
There's also the chance that this limitation is intentional for data safety reasons.

If the AF motor were to suddenly draw a lot of current (which can happen if there is friction in the lens or when the lens hits the ends of travel) and cause a power glitch while the camera was writing to the card, the image being written and possibly all the files on the SD card might be lost.

Given that this thread is about faulty batteries and erratic behavior, it would seem wise that camera designers would try to minimize the chance that such erratic behavior damages the data on the card.

Batteries are a bit of a black box (literally!) when it comes to how an individual battery handles variations in current draw. That makes it hard to trust that every battery can deliver a guaranteed level of power at all times to ensure the reliability of critical systems like saving data to the card.
10-02-2019, 04:15 PM   #42
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QuoteOriginally posted by photoptimist Quote
If the AF motor were to suddenly draw a lot of current (which can happen if there is friction in the lens or when the lens hits the ends of travel) and cause a power glitch while the camera was writing to the card, the image being written and possibly all the files on the SD card might be lost.
True! That's another possibility. It's a shame that the camera can't make some visual indication of what is preventing it from responding.
10-02-2019, 04:18 PM   #43
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QuoteOriginally posted by RobG Quote
True! That's another possibility. It's a shame that the camera can't make some visual indication of what is preventing it from responding.
Knowing brands, it would probably be "leave me the **** alone!"
10-02-2019, 04:28 PM   #44
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I've never had a faulty Pentax branded battery, but the aftermarket ones seem to act up from time to time. One was faulty new out of the packaging.
10-02-2019, 04:30 PM   #45
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QuoteOriginally posted by CapitanXeon Quote
Knowing brands, it would probably be "leave me the **** alone!"
"What happened?" "A light lit up saying 'please do not press this button again.'"

QuoteOriginally posted by MarkJerling Quote
I've never had a faulty Pentax branded battery, but the aftermarket ones seem to act up from time to time. One was faulty new out of the packaging.
This one is a Pentax battery. I checked because I think I may have had a non-branded one at some point.
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