[cosmicap]

Three or four times over the last year or so my K200 has malfunctioned in a mysterious way and did it again today. Having taken a picture the review lingers longer than usual and the orange “thinking about it” light on the back glows for several seconds before going out and then this message on the screen: “image not recorded”. And nor is it. From then on all attempts at taking an image have the same result. When downloading the images have a file name on the card but zero bytes. Previous pictures are fine. This has happened with various SD cards so I do not think that is the problem. I noticed today while this was happening that the batteries seemed to be under pressure and quickly failed. New batteries did not fix the problem. A different card and fresh batteries: all good again. Formatted the old SD and works fine. Is this a known problem? Is my camera just getting old and on its way to camera heaven? Hope not as I love my 200D very much!
Thanks for listening.
Pete

[Na Horuk]

If its not the SD card, it could also be the contacts between the camera and SD card. Make sure they are clean and free of particles.
Also, I hope you are running the latest firmware update

[jatrax]

I don't think it is a 'known' issue as in something that happens to many or is repeatable so you can say "do this and that will happen".

I suspect it is a combination of older batteries and SD cards. I am just theorizing but say your battery is old and having trouble maintaining a steady voltage, during a card write this generates a write error and from that point on the card format is suspect and until you re-format the camera refuses to write to it properly.

Another possibility would be tarnish on the SD slot contacts, (or on the SD card contacts but you would likely notice that) which causes intermittent errors. It might even be a combination of both: say your slot contacts are not as clean as they used to be requiring a slightly higher voltage and your battery gets a little low at the same time, causing a write error.

You might take a look at the SD slot and see if the contacts are shiny, maybe a buff with a microfiber cloth if you can will help. The SD card contacts would also get a buff if they were mine but I doubt that is the issue.

[cosmicap]

I don't think it is a 'known' issue as in something that happens to many or is repeatable so you can say "do this and that will happen".

I suspect it is a combination of older batteries and SD cards. I am just theorizing but say your battery is old and having trouble maintaining a steady voltage, during a card write this generates a write error and from that point on the card format is suspect and until you re-format the camera refuses to write to it properly.

Another possibility would be tarnish on the SD slot contacts, (or on the SD card contacts but you would likely notice that) which causes intermittent errors. It might even be a combination of both: say your slot contacts are not as clean as they used to be requiring a slightly higher voltage and your battery gets a little low at the same time, causing a write error.

You might take a look at the SD slot and see if the contacts are shiny, maybe a buff with a microfiber cloth if you can will help. The SD card contacts would also get a buff if they were mine but I doubt that is the issue.

I immediately zoned in on your suggestion of old batteries. The Eneloops always last a very long time. I am an intermittent user so it is months (no idea how many.....6?) since I changed them. Likely they were due to die. Another detail: when starting on a "new" set of Eneloops the display invariably shows them as half-charged. Take a few pics and on/off a couple of times and they show fully charged from then on.
SD contacts seem clean but I will check the camera contacts. Thanks for the suggestions.
As for firmware update.......I think I never have. Oops........

[Tamia]

The "Image Not Recorded" glitch with the K200D happened to me on two separate occasions, too, both times when I was shooting outdoors in cool weather (but not yet freezing) in November and December. The first time it happened, I shut off the camera, waited a short time (didn't count the seconds), and turned it back on. No trouble after that. Then in late November it happened again, this time when the temperature was near freezing. I repeated the shut-off routine, twice, but the camera refused to shoot a photo each time. Finally I shut off the camera, removed the batteries, waited a minute or two, and reinserted them. The camera worked as normal after that.

Both times this happened, my batteries (Eneloops) were getting down in charge, so I chocked the glitch up to that being the cause but I really don't know. I never did a firmware update on the K200D either. There has only been one, I just learned. Details on this page at Ricoh. Might be worth a try.

[jatrax]

I always had good luck with Eneloops but on my k-x I never really trusted the power display, sometimes it would show yellow and still go for 100's of shots, sometimes it showed green and then went red and the camera died. I just got in the habit of having a freshly charged set in the charger and when going out just swapping the ones in the camera for a fresh set. My charger would trickle charge them so I always had a fresh set.

Not familiar with status of the firmware on that camera but on my k-x the later firmwares were a big improvement in several areas.

[yucatanPentax]

You might take a look at this comment and see if anything seems similar to your situation: https://www.pentaxforums.com/forums/29-welcomes-introductions/285321-my-first...ml#post3111539

[cosmicap]

The "Image Not Recorded" glitch with the K200D happened to me on two separate occasions, too, both times when I was shooting outdoors in cool weather (but not yet freezing) in November and December. The first time it happened, I shut off the camera, waited a short time (didn't count the seconds), and turned it back on. No trouble after that. Then in late November it happened again, this time when the temperature was near freezing. I repeated the shut-off routine, twice, but the camera refused to shoot a photo each time. Finally I shut off the camera, removed the batteries, waited a minute or two, and reinserted them. The camera worked as normal after that.

Both times this happened, my batteries (Eneloops) were getting down in charge, so I chocked the glitch up to that being the cause but I really don't know. I never did a firmware update on the K200D either. There has only been one, I just learned. Details on this page at Ricoh. Might be worth a try.

Here in Oz I don't think cold weather is associated with my problem. Not today anyway. If it happens again I will try your shut-off routine. As far as I remember once this has happened I can't wake up the SD card without reformatting. Today I didn't try as I was more concerned that I might have lost some previous photos and did not want to stress out the card before downloading.

I just checked and already have the firmware update.

[Tamia]

Here in Oz I don't think cold weather is associated with my problem. Not today anyway. If it happens again I will try your shut-off routine. As far as I remember once this has happened I can't wake up the SD card without reformatting. Today I didn't try as I was more concerned that I might have lost some previous photos and did not want to stress out the card before downloading.

I just checked and already have the firmware update.

I'll be interested to find out if this problem occurs again now you have the firmware update.

[arkav]

Here in Oz I don't think cold weather is associated with my problem. Not today anyway. If it happens again I will try your shut-off routine. As far as I remember once this has happened I can't wake up the SD card without reformatting. Today I didn't try as I was more concerned that I might have lost some previous photos and did not want to stress out the card before downloading.

I just checked and already have the firmware update.

I've had this problem a fair number of times with my K200D.

Several factors seemed to correlate with the memory card errors:

1) seemed most likely to happen after firing off a number of photos in a row
2) shooting RAW+ rather than just RAW made it more likely to happen
3) chimping while the camera was writing to the card
4) low battery voltage ( but I'd get it with freshly charged batteries as well )
5) cheaper SD cards
6) deleting files/folders rather than using a freshly formatted card

It was a while before the first time this ever happened to me. This, to some extent, points to a corroded contacts somewhere
( either in the battery compartment or in the SD card slot ) or possibly aging ( rechargeable ) batteries.

It happened most often when I would fire off a series of photos, and then chimp while the camera was still writing to the card. But it would sometimes happen
even if no chimping occurred at all. That was the worst, since it meant I'd just keep shooting without knowing about the error. This would result in a corrupted card
that required tedious recovery.

Based on my experiences of having this happen a number of times, I suspect that this is a problem of a voltage drop occurring while the camera
is trying to write to the camera, or perhaps it's just some kind of timing bug where the CPU can't manage too many simultaneous tasks.

To mitigate this I turned off instant display and started shooting RAW instead of shooting RAW+ ( to reduce the time the camera had to spend writing to the card ).
I tried to avoid fragmenting the SD card - I'd try to shoot till a card was full and then format it before using it again ( on the theory that it takes longer to write
to a fragmented card than a freshly formatted one ).

I tried to avoid chimping until I saw that the camera was done writing to the card. If I ever saw the dreaded error message, I'd just swap out the memory card to make sure I didn't further corrupt the photos on the card.

I tried getting a better card - a Sandisk Ultra didn't help ( vs the original Lexar cards I was using ). After several years of living with these sporatic memory card errors, I tried a Sandisk Extreme card, the problem seemed to
go away completely. I'm using a K30 now so I don't have that much recent experience using the K200D with these better cards. I don't think I ever used anything higher than 8G on the K200D.
I'm not sure - there may be an upper limit on the size of the card the K200D can use - I know someone who had trouble using a 32G card IIRC.

So my first recommendation would be: If you're using a cheap card, go to a decent quality card like Sandisk Extreme of modest size ( and beware of fakes ).

If the problem persists with the better card, then try some of the other approaches like:

a) Format SD cards rather than deleting files/folders
b) Don't chimp until the camera is done writing to the card ( especially after taking multiple shots )
c) clean contacts and/or replace/recondition old rechargeable batteries
d) Not shooting RAW+

I hope this helps.

[sterretje]

If it happens again I will try your shut-off routine. As far as I remember once this has happened I can't wake up the SD card without reformatting.

Just a thought. If you delete photos, how do you delete? On camera or on the computer? If the latter, you simply might have run out of space as deleting actually only moves them to the trash (unless you permanently delete them).

[cosmicap]

Firstly my apologies for this late response. The forum seemed to be having problems over the weekend and then life and weather took over. Thanks for your your comments which I will try to address:

I've had this problem a fair number of times with my K200D.

Several factors seemed to correlate with the memory card errors:

1) seemed most likely to happen after firing off a number of photos in a row

Yes!

2) shooting RAW+ rather than just RAW made it more likely to happen

No. Hardly ever shoot RAW. Usually just JPG but most recently this happened when I switched to RAW (not RAW+)

3) chimping while the camera was writing to the card

I always have the review On but never sort back to review pictures while the camera is writing. I didn't know I could.

4) low battery voltage ( but I'd get it with freshly charged batteries as well )

My batteries tend to stay in the camera for long periods as I am not a daily user. I don't recall this happening with fresh batteries.

5) cheaper SD cards

Yes. My nice 8GB Sandisc Ultra delaminated in the camera and needed some digging out. I've had the non-write problem with Lexar and Dick Smith brand SDs

6) deleting files/folders rather than using a freshly formatted card

I always reformat on the camera and have never remotely approached filling a card.

It was a while before the first time this ever happened to me. This, to some extent, points to a corroded contacts somewhere
( either in the battery compartment or in the SD card slot ) or possibly aging ( rechargeable ) batteries.

Good point

It happened most often when I would fire off a series of photos, and then chimp while the camera was still writing to the card. But it would sometimes happen even if no chimping occurred at all. That was the worst, since it meant I'd just keep shooting without knowing about the error. This would result in a corrupted card
that required tedious recovery.

Yes, generally when firing off several shots. I have ended up with a corrupted card and lost the lot and have also been lucky enough to only lose the last few shots when the problem became apparent. I keep a spare card handy now as it has happened too often. Change card, all's good again.

Based on my experiences of having this happen a number of times, I suspect that this is a problem of a voltage drop occurring while the camera
is trying to write to the camera, or perhaps it's just some kind of timing bug where the CPU can't manage too many simultaneous tasks.

To mitigate this I turned off instant display and started shooting RAW instead of shooting RAW+ ( to reduce the time the camera had to spend writing to the card ).
I tried to avoid fragmenting the SD card - I'd try to shoot till a card was full and then format it before using it again ( on the theory that it takes longer to write
to a fragmented card than a freshly formatted one ).

I tried to avoid chimping until I saw that the camera was done writing to the card. If I ever saw the dreaded error message, I'd just swap out the memory card to make sure I didn't further corrupt the photos on the card.

I tried getting a better card - a Sandisk Ultra didn't help ( vs the original Lexar cards I was using ). After several years of living with these sporatic memory card errors, I tried a Sandisk Extreme card, the problem seemed to
go away completely. I'm using a K30 now so I don't have that much recent experience using the K200D with these better cards. I don't think I ever used anything higher than 8G on the K200D.
I'm not sure - there may be an upper limit on the size of the card the K200D can use - I know someone who had trouble using a 32G card IIRC.

So my first recommendation would be: If you're using a cheap card, go to a decent quality card like Sandisk Extreme of modest size ( and beware of fakes ).

If the problem persists with the better card, then try some of the other approaches like:

a) Format SD cards rather than deleting files/folders
b) Don't chimp until the camera is done writing to the card ( especially after taking multiple shots )
c) clean contacts and/or replace/recondition old rechargeable batteries
d) Not shooting RAW+

I hope this helps.

All good advice and I will be shopping for a Sandisk Extreme of 8 or 16GB and hoping it's not a fake. The SandiscUltra that fell apart in the camera came from the camera shop I bought the camera. Fake? Who knows...... but I hope it is unusual for any card to split open in the camera.

I appreciate your advice and observations. I've certainly got some areas to change my habits and maybe control this annoyance.

---------- Post added 01-13-2015 at 10:43 PM ----------

I'll be interested to find out if this problem occurs again now you have the firmware update.

I must have got the update some years back and forgotten about it. The problem is more recent.