[Dubious Drewski]

I love this thing and I wouldn't trade it for anything else on the market right now, but here are two flaws which exist in the K10 not because of technical limitations, but because someone in the lab either intentionally thought it should function this way, or they just plain goofed badly.

1. The Raw button toggle is unreliable and not fully functional. Let's say you've set your camera to Jpg and you want to start shooting Raw+Jpg, you hit the button and there you have it. Marvelous! What a great idea this little button is! You can shoot in this mode as much as you like now. BUT if you now hit the play(►) button to review your image, it disables the mode! That doesn't make any sense and it's a nuisance, because images are often reviewed after they are shot, so you have to reactivate the mode every time.

Furthermore, if you are already in Raw+Jpg via the menu, this button does nothing at all when pressed; It becomes useless. It SHOULD toggle to plain Jpg mode. That's logically what it should do.

There's no reason for this feature to be behaving the way it does. None.

2. You can not use the onboard flash in wireless mode if you do not have a modern lens attached to the body. This is a huge annoyance for me. I like to have my AF540 off of the camera body when I shoot, so I use the onboard flash as the optical trigger. BUT you cannot be in wireless mode if the camera can't use P-TTL, which is fine for some purposes, but what about us folks who like to put their off-body flash units in manual mode and don't need any metering?

I have two vintage Asahi lenses as well as an extension tube set and because of this flaw, I cannot use any of those things with off-camera lighting. All the onboard flash has to do it fire to trigger the off-camera flashguns, that's it; no metering required. So why the hell can't I do it?

I think I should ask Pentax themselves about this. I wonder what they'd say.

[Geekybiker]

Well they fixed #1 in the k20d. As to what they would say? "upgrade"

It annoys me too, but I shoot in raw all the time anyways so its not a big deal for me.

[Confused]

Hi Dubious Drewski

To the best of my knowledge, I believe the RAW button on the K10D was only ever intended as one-shot short-cut to obtain one RAW image without having to delve into endless menus like other manufactures force you to do, before returning back to using JPEGs. Alternatively, setting the camera to either RAW or RAW+JPEG is very easy to do via the menu !!!

Best regards
Richard

[pop4]

Regarding the RAW button, you can make it a one-time thing, where it reverts back to the original setting after each shot (which is what you have right now), or make it continue and keep shooting in RAW+JPEG until you press the button again.

The setting for this is hidden in the 5th page of the Custom menu.

I shoot in RAW anyway, so I don't make use of the RAW button.

[mattdm]

Well they fixed #1 in the k20d. As to what they would say? "upgrade"

How does it behave in the K20D?

[Jasvox]

I always was under the impression the RAW "button" was for capturing as shot using RAW as an option to the JPEG setting when the camera wasn't in full time RAW mode, via the menu? I don't think the intention of the button was to keep it in RAW for as an extended period of time or indefinitely...thats what the menu option was for?

Jason

[dtsui]

HTML Code:

You can not use the onboard flash in wireless mode if you do not have a modern lens attached to the body. This is a huge annoyance for me. I like to have my AF540 off of the camera body when I shoot, so I use the onboard flash as the optical trigger. BUT you cannot be in wireless mode if the camera can't use P-TTL, which is fine for some purposes, but what about us folks who like to put their off-body flash units in manual mode and don't need any metering?

I don't have a vintage Asahi lens so I can't verify whether this will work or not but it is worth trying. It is possible to put the AF540 in optical slave mode which is one of two wireless modes supported by the flash. To do that you push the LIGHT button on the flash for at least 2 secs until SL1 appears on the LCD. Push the S button on the flash to change to SL2, confirm the setting by pressing LIGHT again (refer to p52 on the flash manual)

Take the flash off the camera and put it in wireless mode as usual making sure it is in Slave mode. If you want to you can select M mode on the flash and vary the output level as desired.

Raise the flash on the K10D, knock down flash compensation to -2 and fire away. The idea of -2compensation is to turn it into a trigger by significantly weakening the output compare to the off-camera flash. You may want to experiment with different compensation. You should be able to use whatever exposure mode on the camera as well.

Let me know if this works.

David

[Gimbal]

Number one is a flaw that I’ve been shouting about as well, but now a days I only shoot raw so… But yes, one thinks it would be really easy to fix.

[Geekybiker]

How does it behave in the K20D?

You can set the button to switch between any two mode IIRC. (I dont have one) IE raw -> jpeg and back again like I really wanted.

[Dubious Drewski]

Oh my God, Slave mode 2 did it! I can't believe it. Thank you! Thank you!

That's incredible. Issue #2 is off of the list, I suppose.

[dtsui]

Oh my God, Slave mode 2 did it! I can't believe it. Thank you! Thank you!

That's incredible. Issue #2 is off of the list, I suppose.

Great! I learned something new as well SL2 can also be used if you have a non-Pentax flash attached to an optical slave sensor. I have a Nikon SB-26 with a integrated optical slave sensor and a AF540. In a dual flash setup, the SB-26 won't fire properly if the AF540 is on SL1.

[Outlaw]

Excellent solution you clever fellow! I learned something too - thanks.