K20 D Fault?

Bought a K20 D today and inserted a fully charged battery from my K10 while waiting for the new battery to charge. Swapped the batteries over after about 3 hours and the camera had lost date and time settings. This doesn`t happen with the K10. Have I got to leave the battery in for longer or have I bought a dud camera?

Cedric

Doesn't sound right to me. These details should be stored in non volatile ram, either battery backed or flash. I forgot that I had put the battery in the grip which I took off at one point. Several days later everything was fine.

Cedric, as Oggy says your new K20D shouldn't do that, I would get in contact with the retailer and ask for a replacement unit.

On Tuesday, I also swapped batteries from my K10D to my new K20D and then back again. Everything has stayed fine, no loss of date and time settings.

Yours may be a temporary problem and will now rectify itself. I would try taking the battery out for approx 5 mins and then put it back in. Then check if you have the same problem. If the problem persists with each battery change, then there is something wrong.

I have just removed my K20D battery and then put it back in after a few minutes. Again there was no loss of date and time.

I hope your is ok now.

Some non-volatile random access memory (NVRAM) requires a large capaacitor to be fully charged for it to retain its data.

I have no clue as to what NVRAM is used in Pentax cameras, but it might just be that, if a capacitor needs to be charged, it'll need a battery to be connected for an extended period of time to achieve its required charge.

My advice: Fully charge a battery, set the time and date, and leave the battery in the camera for at least 24, maybe 48, hours.

Remove the battery for 10 minutes.

Re-insert the battery and check your date/time settings.

If they have reset, return the camera for a replacement or refund.

Simples.

There's a thread on DPreview with the same problem, and it appeared to be solved simply by cleaning the battery and body contacts.

link

I'm not sure if the K10d and K20d have a supplementary battery like the CMOS battery on a PC, or just use a capacitor for the same trick, but whatever it is, is either flat or not getting charged at the moment.

Maybe that's why the K10/20D batteries have three terminals. One terminal (+ common) could be for the internal battery/capacitor.

Don't know if this helps, but when I first got my K-7 I inserted the battery and found it had a little bit of charge in it, I commenced setting the date and time, and then changed a few camera settings.

I put a card into the camera and went to take a shot when it came up "battery depleted"

After it had recharged and put back into the camera, I noticed all the settings I had put in, including date & time, were gone and it had returned to factory settings.

Closely examining my three batteries, of which one is genuine.
I see only two poles. One plus and one minus.
Can you enlighten me, please?

Niklas

You are quite right. The Pentax batteries have only two poles. I've had problems with other batteries recently, mobile phone, and Fuji P&S camera. Each of these batteries has three poles. I was confused, apologies.

The third terminal on some batteries is to allow monitoring of the internal temperature during charging to ensure it does not get too warm. It is essential with cheap cellphone "wall wart" power supplies which are used when the battery is still installed. On a Pentax the battery is removed and charged in a dedicated "high quality" unit.

Just to add to the confusion the new D-L190 battery used in the K-7 has 3 terminals and there are also 3 terminals in both the camera and charger

Glyn

Could be tied to the fact that the camera has a movie mode which will put a heavy drain on the battery and cause an internal temperature rise which will be monitored and the camera shut down if the battery gets to warm.

Another reason for a third contact on a battery is so the cells can be charged individually to balance them.

I think you are probably right. The battery terminals are labelled "+", "T" & "-".

Glyn