Non genuine batteries

Just a quick question about the cheap replacement/extra batteries. Two batteries came with my secondhand K-30, one original Pentax battery and one Hama third party battery. I've always used the cheap batteries in the past myself, both with the K10D and Canon. Absolutely no problems.
But my K30 is suffering from lockups/crashing. The camera will freeze and even the on/off button no longer works. Only thing to do is release the battery, put it back in. I blamed the memory card, but its happened with two different Sandisk 16Gb Extremes. Chances of having two faulty cards so suddenly is pretty remote.
So now thinking (hoping) its the third party battery. At the moment its only happened with that battery loaded. Does anyone know if the cheap batteries are a problem with the K30? After it locked up this morning, i changed batteries to the Pentax original, no lock up since. But it didn't happen that often, so will wait and see what tomorrow brings. So hoping its the battery.

I have cheapish generic spare for my K-30 and have not experienced any problems.
It is well used and I have yet to see any difference in performance to the pentax original.

That's what i feared. Will have to contact SRS tomorrow. Do you happen to know if SRS will honour the 2 year warranty if one forum member sells to another?

Your original thought may be right though. Granted some can use non-Pentax batteries and be OK. But some of them perform poorly. Certainly if you measure the capacity the Pentax ones come out best, and the only ones that actually come close to meeting the specification.

Yes, SRS will honour the warranty, but perhaps see if the Pentax battery delivers and removes the problem. That might be possible if you use the camera extensively over the weekend.

There has been an enormous amount of debate about the pros and cons of after market batteries versus OEM ones.

Both John Riley and I, from long experience, believe that Pentax ones are best. Others with equally long experience think there is no difference.

You seem to have discovered that the week link is the Hama battery. See how things go without using it

Non-genuine batteries are usually as good as the originals. I wouldn't mind betting that some are made in the same factory as the originals! Anyway, the important aspect is the capacity and output - is it the same as the originals? The Hama batteries for the K-5 have a lower capacity - same voltage but a lower capacity, therefore they don't last for as many shots.

You can buy non-gen batteries that are higher capacity than the originals. I have two for the K-5 that are higher capacity and they cost £5 each brand new!! Pentax originals are £60+ so I could buy 12 of these for the price of one original. Guess what? They perform as well as a genuine battery, so I don't need 12 of them.

Regards
David

The only time I've ever had camera problems is when I've had a 3rd party battery fitted.

I had some issues last year with my K-5 II locking up. After I replaced the no-name battery with a genuine Pentax one, no more problems.

OK, so we've probably established for the OP that eliminating the cheaper battery from the equation is at least worth looking into. Hopefully that will be helpful, if not then it's the phone call to SRS.

Have you checked that they are the same specification? Many third party batteries do not have the same capacity as the OEM battery, so that may be the reason. The specs will (or should be) written on the battery, so it's easy to check.

Thanks everyone. I'll use the Pentax battery only for the weekend. I have an intensive session planned with the camera Sunday morning. Should easy shoot a whole batteries worth of images, so see how that goes.
Worst case will be a call to SRS next week.

Thanks again

It doesn't matter what is written on the outside.

It matters what quality and capacity of cell is used inside the plastic outer.

I have had poor quality Hama NiMh batteries and would not touch them as a brand now. I use Vapextech/Vapex with excellent results.

However I have had perfectly respectable no-name batteries from ebay which have performed flawlessly in GX10, GX20, K7 and K5 (different batteries duh!). I don't know the actual capacity, I'd imagine it is less than the Pentax one, however I can do a day's shooting on a single batter so it's fine. They are a fraction of the cost of the Pentax battery.

There are threads every 6 months on this topic perhaps John/Gartmore could compile them into a thread and make it a sticky

Why not just mainly use the Pentax one and keep the Hama one charged up ready as a spare?

John K

If its dodgy chuck it!!! (recycle)

Probably come to that i think. Been shooting with the camera this morning, no freeze, no issues. Not looking good for that Hama battery.

I have a 'lock-up' with my K5 at regular intervals, usually when in continuous shooting mode.

This happened several times with the Pentax battery even before I bought an Energizer spare.

The lock-up happens with both.

I had hoped that subsequent firmware releases might cure this but it is still happening (last time 3 weeks ago when out shooting for the day, F/W V1.14).