Good question John and I can't find a good answer. Perhaps it is down to my tight fisted Yorkshire roots.

My K10D Hahnel experience was good, in line with Bill's comments.

As K10D said, Pentax are not battery manufacturers so I don't see why they should necessarily be better than less well known makes (same argument as for CRT tubes were there were only three(?) big factories producing them but many fold more TV manufacturers using them).

I did see that table, Pentaxophile and although it looks scientific, the test conditions are probably not representative of normal use.

Perhaps it's that I agree with Karma Mechanic that the OEM does seem a bit of a rip-off being typically twice the price of the mid-range competitors. Maybe I don't want to be a total cheapskate (internet) but don't want to over-pay either.

I have probably thought about this for too long, so to borrow a line from Blackadder instead of Python, find a Pentax seller then "..pay the fellow and damn his impudence."

Dear All,

I read a couple of the threads on K5 batteries (including "The Argument Sketch" one, looking for recommendations for particular makes.

The Pentax original seemed well liked but expensive and internet offerings were popular too, but I personally would tend to avoid un-branded or internet "specials".

So I am looking towards Hahnel (which was my K10D spare with no problems and no perceived difference in use), Inov8 based on SRS stocking or Energizer (big brand, can get £20 off at Jessops with Tesco clubcard rewards).

Does anyone have any strong feelings for/against Hahnel, Inov8 or Energizer based on experience.

Regards

Had one freeze-up in 400 shots which was a slight annoyance but easily enough resolved. I'm sure firmware fixes will put the glitches right

No other problems.

The AF seems much better than my K10D (with no leaning pictures) and although I have not seen it mentioned much, I think the metering is much better than K10D both with digital lenses and stopped-down manual lenses.

And, I guess it is natural to hesitate sometimes before a big spend even when you can afford it!

I had my K5 freeze yesterday, as described by earlier posters here and on Mike-P's link.

I was using AF-C in continuous high speed shooting, with frequent pressing of the shutter button, but not holding it down continuously.

LCD top panel and superimposed focus points in viewfinder froze and were unaffected by turning camera off then on.

Cured it by taking battery out then restoring.

Not a big deal but a bit annoying!

I, (well other posters in My Portfolio) have seen the same effect in some of my pictures.

I am not convinced that it is consistent and have not tested whether it is SR dependant.

A few weeks ago I asked if the K10D had any early implementer issues (as the K5 did :wink and one poster replied that the effect being discussed here did appear in some models.

Perhaps I should be making more use of my manual Tamron 28mm f2.5 (02B) - a focus free walk-about?

See this link for more Exif tag names:

http://www.sno.phy.queensu.ca/~phil/exiftool/TagNames/index.html

Regards

Hi John,

You can extract a manual to file, for exiftool.

1. Go to "Command prompt" to run a programme at command line interface (DOS style).
2. Use "cd your_directory" to move to the directory where exiftool.exe is installed.
3. Type "exiftool>manual.txt" to dump the manual to manual.txt.


This is an example of a line I use to extract some data to file, using
EXIFTOOL.EXE in the root directory on the E drive.

"e:EXIFTOOL -T -r -directory -filename -datetimeoriginal -shuttercount c:Images20114>eimg.txt"

The "-T" extracts data to a tabular format;

The "-r" recursively processes all files in the directory (and sub-directories) as specified at the end of the instruction, i.e. "c:Images20114". The -r is the part that allows the bulk processing.

-directory, -filename, -datetimeoriginal and -shuttercount are the exif parameters that I am printing to the data file;

eimg.txt is the data file being created.


The hardest part is finding the names of the exif tags of the items you wish to extract.

Good luck,


p.s. beware that the message software here seems to remove the back-slash character so if it does not make sense, I can send you a PM this evening. I think this only occurs in my example directory name between the colon and "exiftool".

Here are a couple of threads covering Sony remotes triggering Pentax cameras:

https://www.pentaxuser.com/forum/topic/remote-to-operate-video-on-k-x-27494/p-0#comm_310787

https://www.pentaxuser.com/forum/topic/ist-d--sony--remote-365/p-0#comm_1806


Regards

Not as far fetched as you think...

I thought somebody HAD discovered a couple of years ago that a Pentax DSLR could be fired using TV remotes from certain manufacturers (it might have been the k10d & Sony IIRC).