K10D refuses to fire in low light

I'm trying to get used to my K10, but in low light it sometimes refuses to fire the shutter. It is rather irritating as it does it on any mode, even manual which I use most of the time.

In manual, it should always fire regardless if the camera's "brains" think the scene is under exposed.

If you pup up the flash, it should give some pulses to try to help focus in low light.
Alternatively, the 360/540 flash units have a red light that will shine a pattern to help focus without the distracting flashes. (the red light is still rather distracting but not as much.)

If your custom settings are the defaults then the camera needs to focus before it will take the shot.
In low light this can be hit-and-miss (for any camera, not just the K10D).

My personal setup is to set the half-press of the shutter to NOT focus, and to use the dedicated "AF" button on the back. That way the K10D will always take the shot - even if it's out of focus.

Set the custom setting "AF by Press Halfway" to "Off"

I find it incredibly useful for all kinds of photography and it's now second nature
You just have to retrain yourself to focus with the thumb, then press the shutter.

Matt

Right, I was using a manual lens so focusing was a bit of a problem.

I think I'd get annoyed at having to focus using a separate button most of the time. It seems to only happen with my A50 1.7, although I didn't use the others much because of the low light.

Oh and the camera was set to manual focus.

With a manual lens the camera will not fire if it is not in focus and set to AF. If you set it to MF it will fire, in focus or not.

Aha! To expand on John's comment:

* If you have the focus switch to AF.C or AF.S then the camera will ONLY fire the shutter if it's in focus (this is called "snap focus"
* If you have the focus switch to M then the camera will fire anytime. Assuming you haven't changed the custom settings as I mentioned, then half pressing will engage a focus check - don't rely on the red highlight, but the green octagon at the bottom of the viewfinder. When that's lit the camera has an accurate focus.

With the *ist-D I had one lot of settings for MF lenses (AF on half press, and had to switch to M focus mode), and another for AF lenses (AF disabled).
Now I only have AF lenses, and just use the rear AF button.

It's confusing at first - but once you have the hang of it... it's blindingly quick and I rarely miss a shot

Matt