10 mb Pictures

As this is my first post I would like to say Hello to every one. The members of this board appear to have a wealth of knowledge and experience. Hence me jioning. Please bear with me as I have not used SLR cameras for some years now. My last was the OM20. I have been using a variety of Digital Compact cameras,but I have just bought the K10. I must say that from the results I have got so far, it was the right move.
One query that I have is that I have got the camera set up to record 10mb pictures at 3 star quality. However the largest size of the pictures I have taken is only 2.4mb. Is this normal.

Also I was given a variety of lenses from the Pentax ME super. Although these fit the K10 I am unable to take any photos. All that happens is the F stop light flashes in the view finder and I am unable to press the shutter release button. I think they may be too old and therefore not compatible.

They are
Super Paragon Auto Zoom F = 35 - 100mm
Vivitar MC Tele Converter 3x-22
Panagor Auto Macro Converter
Vivitar Series 1 70-210mm f3.5

Any help appreciated

Hi Ernie welcome to the forum.
From what you are saying i surmise you still have it set for hi quality jpeg which is the 3 star setting. You need to set it too raw to get up to the 10meg file size you mentioned. There is a button on the camera body which does this.
You need to remember that you will not be able to view these RAW format pics using your basic windows picture viewers as they do not support pef files instead you can use the software that came with the camera or download a suitable Raw converter from the web such as Picasa which is by the way free. Or just leave it on the current jpeg setting if you are not planning on doing any major editing. Good luck.

You need to change the setting in your camera to (i think its called) allow aperture priority. Its on either page 107 or 111 of your manual. sorry i cant be more precise but i am at work and dont have all the facts with me and this will allow you too use those lenses you mentioned.

I suspect what we have here is a classic case of unit confusion

The images you are taking are 10 megapixels. After JPEG compression they take up around 2.4MB of storage space.


K10D RAW files come in at around 9-11MB, but this is pure coincidence and has little to do with them being 10MP photos. It is well worth getting into RAW processing for the increased flexibility, but it wont give you any more pixels to play with.


In order to use your old lenses you will need to set the custom function which allows use of the aperture ring. This has been discussed at length on these forums before so a quick search should bring up all the info you need.

Thanks for your prompt replies.
I have permitted the use of the aperture ring in Custom Settings and this now allows me to use the lenses. Which I am glad about, obviously saves me money. No doubt I will update to auto lenses in the future but for now I can experiment with the ones I have.