Help K20D Crashed, Locked or Froze

Can anyone shed light on this problem I had this morning, or has anyone else had a similar problem?

I was out this morning taking some early morning misty shots.
I had just taken off my 16-50 and put on my Sigma 10-20.
Took one shot but had realised I still had it on mirror lock up (2sec delay).

So I tried to go into settings, fn button, but nothing happened.
Switched off camera and noticed frame display still on!
When switched back on... nothing!
Nothing appears on the screen, no start up etc.
Switched on and off again... nothing.
Changed back to the 16-50... nothing.

In the end I removed both batteries from body and grip and replaced.

Switched on... success!

The only thing I may have done is pressed the FN button when it was writing to the card, I can't think off anything else.

Do I or the camera have a problem.

Thanks in advance for your help.

ali

It sounds like youve experienced a system crash similar to the ones you get with the operating system on any computer.

I dont think its anything to worry about unless it does it a lot, I'm sure someone else will be along to confirm this.

Not on the K20D, but I've had similar with the K10D a couple of times. As you did, removing the battery cured it but nothing else did.

Happens a lot with mobile phones too, system crashes, so force reboot by removing and reinserting batteries. Don't think you have a problem, sounds like it just crashed.

Check your firmware version. Turn off your camera. Press and hold the Menu button, power on. The current firmware version is displayed. If it's still 1.00, update to 1.01. You can download it from here.

Thanks guys, was just a little worried.

Thanks for the link Mannesty.

I must still have the original firmware, cos I've never changed anything, will check tomorrow.

Will download it tomorrow, at work at mo and it blocks it.

Is the only diff for 1.01 the noise reduction?

Cheers

ali

P.S. Sorry about all the smilies... I'll get sick of them someday.

Just going back to the camera locking up, if you read the instruction book it says that you should remove the battery, wait a moment or two and then replace the battery. If this works the camera does not need a repair. And it did work, so nothing to worry about.

The noise reduction issue is the only fix that Pentax state on their website. However, it's not unheard of for software/firmware developers to sneak in fixes that are perhaps not worth mentioning (or owning up to).

I'm not saying that your issue is fixed in 1.0.1, but it might be, and it's best to be on the latest firmware anyway.

Just an update! It's done it again... twice!

On Wednesday past, my screen refused to show a preview image, also couldn't change any settings, rectified when I switched the camera off and back on.

Then yesterday was out taking photos, snapping away, when nothing appeared on my screen. I had just taken a 1500th f2.8 portrait, but I noticed when I had pressed the shutter it was like shutter lag, not quite 2 seconds when mirror lock on but a delay certainly.

I took 2 more pics still nothing on the screen, still with the delay, I switched the camera off, which left the frame count on the top LCD... unusual! Switched back on and still the same.
I eventually took out the body and grip batteries, re-fitted, and camera back to 'normal'.

When I reviewed the images, the 1st & 3rd were pure white and the 2nd was white with a band of lilac across the middle.

Is this more than a 'normal' crash problem? Anyone experienced this?

Bought from SRS in September 08.

Firmware is 1.01.

Any help/advice much appreciated.

ali

I would send it in for repair. It has never happened to me with either my *ist-DS or my K20D.

Contact SRS, show them the images, explain the problem. I'm sure they will replace it without hesitation.

I think I have had exactly the same problems with my K20D and reading this thread has made me feel a lot happier

I have had two different occurrences:

I have had it lock up on about three occasions when it just seemed to stop working and turning it off left the number of free exposures on the top LCD. On each occasion I had to remove the battery to recover it. This only happened when I was using the 2s timer.

I have also had two instances where it appears to have taken a shot but the displayed and stored picture was all purple, albeit with a complete set of exif data that looked ok. Once it is in this state then further shots came out either all purple or white. This problem was fixed by just turning it off and back on.

My K20D dates from November last year and I'm up to just over 1600 exposures. I'm using Firmware 1.01.

I never had any problems like this with the K10D (10,000+ exposures) but both problems appear to happen very infrequently and seem to be easily recovered. I decided that it would be very difficult to convince anyone else that there was a problem so I have just accepted it as the sort of device crash that seems to be common on lots of complex equipment.

I suspect that there is a subtle bug in the software that manages the sensor which of course is new for the K20D which may be influenced by the differences within tolerances so that it does not occur on all devices.

Glyn

I haven't experienced anything like this but from experiance with computers crashing, it usually indicates a hardware or software problem (Microsoft never blaim the OS!). The last significant issue I had with my PC behaving badly turned out to be a memory problem. The K20D has RAM just like a PC, I suggest it might be worth having it checked out none the less.

(edited to correct spelling error)

Interesting.

Makes me wonder how long it will before we need to have anti-virus application.

It could be a lot of things - internal memory, CPU, software, memory cards &c.

Replacing it is an easy option - but longer term it would be useful to email Pentax with as much detail as you have along with all of the images that were affected. If it is a firmware/application problem then that detail may help them resolve it.