Battery drained completely overnight

Would you expect a K10D left switched on (although auto off = 1min) overnight, connected via the hot shoe, a 5P cable and a Hot shoe adaptor F, to an AF540 which was switched off, to completely drain the camera battery?

Because it did. Not particularly bothered, but worth knowing.

I've left my GX10 left on for days without much battery drain thanks to the auto-off. Never left flash accessories on it, though.

My auto-off function is set to off because I find it incredibly annoying when exploring a subject if the camera keeps switching off.

So my battery only drains if I forget to switch off, which so far since 1969 has not happened, with any camera. There will no doubt be a first time.

As regards the flash, that's interesting, unless it was a coincidence and the battery was almost out anyway.

Indeed - my K10D is the same. I've found a couple of situations now where the battery drains surprisingly fast.

The other one is if you leave it plugged in to the computer via the USB port. Drains completely in a couple of hours.

(I can hear John tutting even as I write )

One of my very few gripes about the GX10 is that I do find the battery indicator to be pretty much useless. It seems to go from "full" to "half" to "empty" in a few minutes, i.e. practically no warning from supposedly full. TBH, I did hope/expect a %age scale.

A few minutes?

Luxury that is.

My K10D goes from full, to half, and if I'm lucky and quick I can take one more picture before it's empty.

It was mainly what made me get another battery (a cunning marketing plan, if you ask me).

I think it's because the battery delivers full power to the camera for almost all its charge and then suddenly dips at the end.

This is quite possibly a good thing in terms of camera performance.

It's another Li-ion battery 'feature' - you can't track charge level by voltage very well as it stays pretty constant until very nearly empty. Laptop computers get around this by keeping track of charge/discharge current over time - i.e. it was 50% full, we've just drained 2A for 5 minutes, so now it's 45% full...

Of course if the charger isn't integrated into the device you don't have the option of doing this, so you get a crummy charge level indication.

Robin

I find i can get about an hour with the camera turned on before it goes from half to empty.
Chris did your new battery improve the time it took to totally discharge :
I have a generic brand as well as the genuine battery and i found the generic one lasts longer than the pentax

No - as far as I can tell, they're much the same (and both Pentax ones) in every respect.

What I keep forgetting to do, is note how many shots I get out of each one. It's loads though.

I have no issue with the battery life as such, but it is sometimes annoying when it dies suddenly, since if I miss the indicator going to half, the only warning I get is when the shutter won't release.

I've just got used to knowing roughly how long it's been since the last change, and if there's even a shadow of a doubt in my mind that it will last for what I want to do, I swap it for the charged one.

Was very relieved that I remembered my spare K10D battery this morning (it had been kicking around out of the bag). Got into the forest (New Forest that is), was just about to adjust the aperture for the first shot when everything went blank. Saved a fruitless trip.

I'm glad I've got a K100D Super with rechargeable AA's. They seem to go on quite a while once you've got to "half" on the indicator.

thanks of some useful comments... my battery indicator goes from full to empty in a matter of minutes

cheers