K10D battery life

Has anyone formed any views on the K10D battery? in particular its supposed performance.

Am I right in thinking the battery needs to be charged a few times before reaching its full capacity?
The reason I ask is because my Camera is only on image number 310 and I have had to charge the battery twice, even allowing for use in cold weather and spending longer than average playing with the camera and admiring the LCD surely I shoul have got more shots than that from two full chargings.

I only got 330 shots from the battery the first time I used it, and not many of those were taken with the built-in flash, which is a long way short of the 500 normally claimed for the camera. However on second use I am past 500 shots and still have 3 bars showing!

If 500 shots is whats expected then why have they taken away one of the great things about pentax DSLR cameras and thats the ability to use 'normal' batteries ie AA. I have on many occasions fired over 1000 shots on freshly charged Ni-Mh 2000 mAh uniross AA batteries. I don't use the LCD a huge amount but I do use it and have tended to use external flash rather than built in but AA's seem so capable I was so disappointed when I saw the K10 battery spec.
I loved the idea of always having battery availbilty in pretty much all situations countries and times of day or night, cos if you can't find four AA batteries for sale then you are either unlucky or not looking hard enough.

Rob

Just my thoughts -

The LiIon battery was almost certainly necessary. The camera has a much faster processor, more functions, plus the SR - all this consumes power.
And, if you've ever used the *ist-D with grip and NiMH batteries you'll know of the hassles involved in that.

My first charge lasted about 400 shots with *loads* of LCD viewing. Compared to my *ist-D battery life it was much improved.

When the battery runs out and shows one less mark on the battery gauge, it's definitely time to change - there was enough for quite a few shots (maybe 20 or 30), but don't take the camera out without a spare battery!

LiIon has a couple of characteristics - they self-discharge slower than NiMH so you can leave the spare in the bag for longer; you can "top" them up - rather than having to discharge/recharge - in fact I've read that's better for them.


I know lots have gripes about not using AA cells, but personally I prefer having a more reliable battery with a more reliable power indicator After all, a spare battery is not that expensive (even at the Pentax price) compared to the cost of the K10D itself.

Matt

I bought a K10D about ten days ago and found that if I leave it plugged into the USB port on the computer the battery discharges completely in about an hour or so.

Is this normal?

Other than that a charge seems to last several hundred shots, despite a lot of LCD and flash use, and with anti-shake left on most of the time. Don't know exactly how many shots a charge lasts yet, since I've left it connected to the USB port twice now... Doh!

my first charge hit 484 shots before dropping to "half" on the display, at which point I topped it up because I wanted be sure of using the camera next day.

If you look at the specs on the K100D, you will note that its rated battery life on AAs is a fairly pathetic 300 shots compared to the DL2 at 600. The 10D has even more beefy features to drain the battery, I doubt AAs would cut the mustard.

ChrisA - the best thing is to get an SD card reader for the PC.
I can't remember the last time I connected my camera directly to the PC!

But, battery life of an hour sounds very low... doesn't give much hope for tethered shooting in the future
Matt

Absolutely - once I invest in a couple more cards I'll get a reader too. But at the moment I have only the one SD card (and I tend to pull the shots off it on to the PC long before it fills up).

It's actually very quick to grab the shots off the card while it's in the camera, and then delete them freeing up the space. If I pull the USB plug out of the camera as soon as the images have transferred, it makes no noticeable difference to the battery life.

Not sure this is even possible - the LCD on top just displays "PC" as soon as you plug the USB connector in, and you can't do anything with it then AFAICT, other than use the PC to pull the images across.

But it would be nice to know whether the obvious power drain while connected is a fault or expected behaviour.

make sure you get a decent reader, I originally bought a reader because my first digicam was painfully slow but the K10D is actually quicker than most USB2 readers. It's certainly a lot faster than my cheapo 7dayshop one anyway.

Thanks for the response guys.

I do use the USB for transfers at the mo' (my printers card readers wont read the SD card , must be too big) so will have to invest in a card reader.
Not been leaving the USB plugged in for longer than needed tho'.

I suppose I'll have to put the battery life down to the cold weather, I never got any warning the battery was going either, one minute it was showing full charge the next it was dead?

I had mine go down unexpectedly on a very cold day.

On the Thursday before Christmas, and only a day after my K10 had arrived, I spent a very cold hour waiting for a steam train to arrive at Guildford station. It was completely stupid as it was foggy and you could only see a few yards.

As happens with these sort of events the arrival times are a bit uncertain and you get very little warning so I had the K10 out and ready all the time. It was very cold and there was bits of ice falling off of the footbridge.

As you do, while I was waiting, I took a few shots of other trains, the signals and a few signs. When the steam train did arrive I had the camera set to continuous but it gave up and shut down after the third shot and only the 44th image taken by the K10. I turned it back on again and the battery indicator was empty. I put the camera under my coat for while and the battery indicator recovered to showing a complete bar. When I got home I put the battery on charge but it only took around 10 minutes to charge. So my assumption was that it went down because of the prolonged exposure to the cold.

I've not had a repeat of this problem but it has not been as cold. However next time I'll try and keep it warmer.

Glyn

How do for instance the Canadians find the battery life - they have to deal with serious cold after all. I'm astounded that the battery seemingly reacts so badly to cold especially as this winter has been so mild compared to normal.

GlynM
My problems sounds nothing like yours, even removing the battery and putting it in my pocket didn't help, it was dead and stayed dead, and it took the full 180mins to charge when I got it home.
Going to see whats available on ebay and see if I can get a back up without spending another £50 on a geniune Pentax.

Just a thought - the claims for 500 shots from the battery only talk about flash use - no mention of what prolonged used of Shake Reduction or having the sensor cleaned each time you start the camera up each time.

On my third use of the battery I got over 500 shots - and that was with SR + cleaning!

I think I recall that when Ni-Cads were all the rage the battery needed to be "conditioned" by several cycles of charge/discharge before they would charge to full capacity. I don't know if this also applies to Li-ion batteries.

UPDATE:-

Just finished recharging the battery (pentax original) I put a voltmeter on it and it registers 11.7 volts - you'd need a lot of AA's to get that! BUT - why is the 11.7v different from the 7.4 v on the battery?

Actually, what we do here is keep them in a hollowed out block of ice. That way the temperature doesn't get below zero celsius. When travelling, we always keep them in a beaver-pelt lined bag on our dog sled until we get to the next trading post/igloo. All this provided no ice snakes bite us on the way...



On a more serious note, the weather in Vancouver is the same as you guys get in UK and western Europe, and to be quite honest, I have not noticed the lower temperatures affecting anything electronic yet other than lower battery power on startup. And I say yet because we're having our coldest winter in "since before I got here".

So far no problems, but I think battery power is the least of your worries when the temperatures are that low. Brrr...