This sort of thing is fairly common with other cameras, too. Batteries and capacitors eventually die and leaving a camera unused for a long while doesn't do them any favours. The Ricoh website says that date and time will be retained for 48 hrs max after the main battery has been removed. So if your main battery drained while you weren't using the camera, or it wasn't in the camera, the internal battery (or capacitor?) will have run down until it was completely discharged. Not a good situation.

If you haven't tried it yet, put a fully charged main battery in the camera, turn the camera on, set time and date, change settings so that the camera will remain on and not enter sleep mode, then leave it on for many hours (overnight?). It might just manage to get a bit of charge into whatever isn't working. But don't hold your breath.

Good luck.

Steve

Been through Upton many times on the way to other places. Now you're making me wish I'd stopped and had a look round...

A nice little set.

Steve

And the K3 series can do some shift (called Composition Adjustment) in live view by shifting the sensor relative to the lens - same effect as using a shift lens to shift the lens relative to the sensor. You can, of course, see the effect of the shift before pressing the shutter button.

Steve

You haven't got a 70mm (Sigma) or 25mm 2.5-5x (Laowa) . And I'm not gonna sell mine to you and create gaps in my set of macro lenses .

Steve

Do you actually need a laptop? A desktop with the same performance as a laptop is usually cheaper, then you can have your choice of monitor. I had to face the same decision as you about 8 years ago when the laptop was on its last legs and decided that a mini-desktop plus big screen was the way to go for stuff that needed much processing power, with my existing tablet for general use such as e-mail and internet. I've never regretted it. And for what it's worth, all my advice re choosing a monitor came from that exercise.

Steve

A couple of things I missed earlier. Probably best to go for:

- An IPS screen. These have a wide viewing angle so colours don't change as you change the angle at which you're viewing the screen. They aren't perfect but are a good, reasonably priced, choice for photography.
- A matt screen rather than a glossy screen. Gets rid of annoying reflections and better for the sort of colours you'll be getting with wildlife/animals. Glossy is great for the vivid colours typical of blockbuster videos and TV series, but that isn't what you'll be doing.

Other people may have different opinions!

Steve

No recommendations for specific brands or models from me, just a few things to think about when choosing which monitor to buy.

First, get one which covers the full sRGB colour space, or at least very close to 100%, and preferably where the colour has been calibrated in factory. Otherwise, the colours you see on your prints might not match what you saw on the monitor when editing the photos.

Second, don't go huge. For what you want to do, a 24" or even 22" screen is probably plenty big enough. Think of where you'll be using it. How much space do you have? How much bigger than your laptop screen does it really need to be? You can run both laptop and external monitor at the same time, editing on the monitor and other software on the laptop screen, so the screen size available to you is actually the sum of both.

Third, check how the monitor will connect to the PC. It will probably be OK, but your PC specs suggest that it is a few years old and you don't want to get the monitor out of the box only to find that the sockets on the monitor don't match those on the PC. Converters and adapters are readily available, but that would be just another nuisance you can do without.

Fourth, Spad is correct that your laptop isn't up to driving a 4K monitor. 'HD Graphics Family' in your laptop specs means that HD is the limit, so stick to HD (1920 x 1080 or similar resolution). That's perfectly OK for a 24"-ish monitor. For what you want to do, you'll not notice the difference.

Fifth, get one that can at least tilt so you can get it at the right viewing angle for you.

As far as laptop memory is concerned, 4GB is now on the low side for photo editing, particularly if you're doing complicated things with a state of the art editing program. However, you're presumably already using the laptop for editing so would know if it's a limitation for what you'll be doing. Adding an external monitor will take up a bit of memory so you might find a difference. However, adding more memory to a laptop is tricky unless the laptop has been designed so you can do it without getting into the innards of the laptop. If you really, really need more memory, it's probably time to get a new laptop with better processor as well.

Finally, and in spite of what Spad says, DO NOT buy a 50" TV!! TVs are designed to be viewed from a distance, you'll be viewing from close up. Unless, of course, you're looking for an excuse to get a big new TV...

Hope that helps.

Steve

Thanks, Spad. Good to know that there's a 3rd party option. That's an answer to how to run a K3 for longer than a battery with allow, The Pentax adapter that plugs into a 13 amp socket rather than USB was as rare as hens teeth when I was looking for one.

Steve

Thanks. A few answers to your questions.

The K3 Mk 1 does not have an easy way to boost gain in live view but there is a workaround which I found for another situation and might be useful to you. See link. Hope it helps. The K3iii has many options for determining LCD brightness, but I rarely use live view so haven't worked out what they all do!

The K3 Mk1 does not have 'eye detection' which turns off the LCD when looking through the viewfinder. The K3 iii does have it.

Power supply via USB is not supported by the K3 Mk 1, USB is for downloading files to a computer. Running the K3 Mk 1 from an external power supply requires a proprietary power adapter (AC Adapter Kit K-AC132) which plugs into a dedicated socket. I've got the adapter and it works fine, but was tricky to find. The K3 iii can take power via USB, there is a proprietary adapter but folks wiser than me have found that a non-proprietary USB cable of the right type will do the job.

Good luck.

Steve

Just to be sure, have you bought an original K3 or a K3ii or the K3iii (the latest version)? The K3 and K3ii are very similar in most respects, the K3iii is very different. The reason for asking is that I've got a vague memory of having looked into boosting the gain of live view for one of the versions (for another use, not astro) but can't remember the result and am pretty sure it would be different for the K3/K3ii and the K3iii. I'll try to refresh my ageing memory cells once I know which version you have.

Steve