Originally posted by JohnX Surely it would make more sense to just dispose of it? No point in keeping on using something you can't trust.
If it's the battery at fault, agreed.
Originally posted by Saxplayer1004 voltage drop under load will increase as the battery voltage drops since the current required goes up. When the battery is mostly full, it won't sag nearly as much as when it's empty so that weird behavior is usually only observed at the lower battery levels. It is standard behavior for all batteries, though lithium are more stable than other chemistries in this department. Batteries are cheap, if you think it's acting weird, recycle it.
I agree, but in this case I'm not certain that the battery is faulty.
Originally posted by photoptimist This can happen with old, weakened, defective, or low-quality batteries. When the camera tries to draw a lot of power, the bad battery's voltage drops too much causing glitches and low battery warnings. Personally, I'd dispose of that battery. If that bad battery glitches while the camera is writing data to the SD card, you can corrupt the SD card and lose all the images on it. P.S. Dirty contacts on the battery or camera can also cause this behavior. Cleaning the contacts is the first line of defense against power glitches.
I did get a corrupted SD card once previously, but I can't be certain that it was this battery causing it. I wondered what caused that corruption.
Originally posted by slartibartfast01 It could be an internal resistance problem as this increases with age and burst mode with its high current draw over a longer period than for single shots would be more likely to cause prolonged voltage drops.
True. Good point.
Originally posted by stevebrot The short answer is yes. A voltage drop on load may result in electronic fault in the same sense as holding one's breath may result in one passing out.
Except that at the point where the camera wasn't responding, it was only doing AF and attempting to trigger the shutter, rather than being in the middle of a series of shutter releases.
Originally posted by Apet-Sure What brand batteries are you using? Some of the Chinese-made batteries for Pentax are truly horrible. They don't actually have the milliamp-hour ratings they advertise, they don't hold charge (self-discharge), etc. Some members here will only use genuine Pentax batteries; they're expensive, and you get what you pay for. My used K-5IIs came with one Pentax and two Watson batteries. The Pentax is rated 1860mAh; the Watsons are 1800mAh, so basically the same as far as the labeling goes. However, the Watsons drain much faster than the Pentax. This could be due to their age or number of charge/discharge cycles they've seen, but I suspect it's because they are simply inferior. They work OK, and I'm not slamming Watson, but I do have to charge them more often.
It's a Pentax battery. I checked when I took it off the charger.
Originally posted by TwoUptons I’ve had things like this happen with my K-01 and my K1.
Soon afterward, the batteries started holding noticeably less charge...
I’ve used it as a hint it’s time to buy some new batteries...
OK, thanks!
Thanks to everyone who responded!
I think I may have assigned the cause to the wrong source.
I think the reason that the shutter refused the fire was because the camera was still writing the data to the SD card from the previous burst. I'm a bit surprised that it stops the camera from performing AF, but it was the blocking of the shutter release that was the most frustrating. I realise that AF is likely to be a very CPU intensive activity, but you wouldn't expect writing data to be CPU intensive. I'll have to look at configuring a mode which works better for burst mode - minimising image processing and writing RAW only, perhaps. It's really frustrating having a Platypus in focus and filling the viewfinder but the shutter release is blocked. By the way, the SD cards are Sandisk Extreme Plus which are rated to 80mb/s.
I wonder whether the faster CPU in the KP or K1 handles burst mode better than the K3?