Pentax Problems - K20D - "locks up" / "freezes"

[Lynton]

Hi all,

Thought I'd put this up for discussion, as not come across anythign like it before, neither had anyone where I bought it, so it's off to Pentax UK......

Bought a K20D other day from Warehouse Express's Bargain Basement, and with varying lenses and varying memory cards have experienced the same intermittent, unpredictable problem....

Switch camera on, take first picture and the camera seems to crash / lock up / freeze.......... cannot access menu, cannot take another picture, switch it off, everything goes off apart from the no of exposures left on the card slot, and the only way to reset the camera is to remove the battery and then reinsert it. The camera could then be fine for a while or freeze up again.


1) If it gets past the first shot will be fine until switch off and then switch on again (may be fine then as well)

2) Shoot high res Jpg (****) and RAW (PEF file, not DNG) - so each time I am writing somewhere in the region of 21 Mb to a card.

3) Only have Sandisk or Lexar cards bought from reputable sources - either 4 or 8 Gb's.

4) Most recent firmware of 1.03 installed as per Pentax.jp's instructions.


Any ideas?

One of the guys there did say that had a slowish speed memory card - but surely that shouldn't casue the problem. Am I right in my understanding it will just take longer for each dataset to get from teh camera to the card.......

Unfortunately, as now an obsolete model, only real option was for it to go back to Pentax for them to take a llok.


ANyone else heard of a similar problem?

 

[andyred]

Hi

Sorry to hear your having trouble, not had that problem where the Camera completely freezes, have had trouble with the buffer on the camera being full if using a 'slow' card, so gives you the effect of being frozen as it won't continue to fire until it's cleared it. Both Sandisk and Lexar are decent cards - what model / speed are they.

Have you tried just shooting in Jpegs only - does this freeze the camera, if it was buffering up shooting RAW + Jpegs, then I would have thought just Jpegs shouldn't have.

Have you tried formatting the card in the camera ?

Have you tried a new card, just in case you've a duff card ?

Did you upgrade the firmware, was it done before you recieved it or was it factory installed - might be worth trying to re-install the firmware (or roll back to previous if possible) in case the upgrade didn't work properly ??

Have you spoke to Pentax themselves to see if they can offer any advice over the phone for you to try before sending it back ?

Lots of questions I know, but if you haven't already done so, worth trying. Hope you manage to get it sorted

 

[Lynton]

Andy,

Thanks for the quick reply.......

Yeah, tried Jpeg only, RAW only and RAW+ .... all equally likely or unlikely to cause the error.......

Tried all of my 6 memory cards, 4 x 4Gb, one *Gb and a 4 Gb micro card with an adaptor...... Initially seemed to be the 8Gb causing errors, but have replicated the error on 5 of the 6 cards now. Not sure of the speed but not the fastest........

I too have maanaged to fill the buffer in the camera, but wait a few secs and it sorts itself out ok.

I upgraded the firmware myself, after downloading from pentax.jp and following the insturctions in the read me file. Simple stuff. - Make sure file x is in the root directory of the card, and battery is charged. Insert card and switch on whilst pressing menu button - do nothing until it says "updated successfully" ~(1.03 is just supposed to improve shake reduction)

Did try speaking to pentax tech support - the guy said no one aware of it, which I find hard to believe as googling "Pentax 20d problem freezing" - get's similar forum messages to what i have put above......... one aussie lady had a circuit board replaced......

we'll see what happens.

 

[andyred]

mmmmm, can't think of anything else then, did you try the camera before you upgraded the firmware, can you revert back / install previous version to see if that helps? Might be worth redownloading and re-installing the latest firmware to see if that makes any difference - I think I'm clutching at straws, but hope you manage to get it sorted out.

 

[Lynton]

well the nice people at Warehouse Express swapped it for me today, (after lots of toys leaving prams!!)