Steve'sDigicams

irivlin · Oct 12, 2007, 8:27 PM

Sounds like it's impossible but the truth is that my K10D autofocuses more accurately with fully charged batteries. I read a passing reference to this, in a review somewhereand found it hard to believe. - Then I tried it myself - it's absolutely true. I still fail to see how this could be the case but it's proven itself beyond a doubt to me.

Has anyone else bumped into this bizarre anomaly?

Ian Rivlin

penolta · Oct 12, 2007, 9:32 PM

Does this happen before the low battery warning appears? If so, perhaps it has something to do with the lens you are using and how much of a load there is on the drive screw?

bigdawg · Oct 12, 2007, 10:06 PM

I have the same problem with my Kit lens but my Sigma 100-300 doesn't do it as bad.

Dawg

ishino · Oct 13, 2007, 12:34 AM

never noticed this, but i have two batteries in my k10d, one in the body and one in the grip and i have yet to drain them both down.

irivlin · Oct 13, 2007, 2:32 AM

Never taken a shot with the battery indicator flashing. It's not that big a deal. I mounted the camera onm a tripod and focused on a lens resolution chart, which was 12 ft away. This was when it showed up. If the aperture is stopped down, the fault is hardly visible. I was shooting at F2.8, however and it became very obvious at this aperture. All I have to do is to keep the battery charged up.
Just as an aside. It's becoming obvious to me that the resolution of the K10's sensor is far better than most lenses can handle. A "good" lens, at the correct aperture and shutter speed, gives much greater resolution (apparently) on the K10D, than images I've seen on the Canon 5D (12.8 megapixels), where the lens is " a bit suss". It's interesting, because we're all excited about greater and greater megapixels, yet is seems like lenses haven't quite kept up with the megapixel race. Has anyone else experienced this? I'm wondering whether the 22 megapixel Canon EOS 1Ds Mk3 will be wasting some of its resolution, if the lenses can't put the information down on the sensor. Having said all this, I'm still of the opinion that a pic taken on a well set up Leica 35mm camera and using low speed film and a top grade lens, still beats (just) digital SLR cameras. (But the film has to be scanned to an almost ridiculously high resolution to show the medium at its best. I use a Minolta Dimage Sacn Multi Pro. The TIFF image from a 4800DPI scan comes out at about 240 megabytes - ie almost unmanageable. Check out:-http://www.rivlin.com/tamron_sp_300film.jpg
It's 5.8 megs (ie, a jpeg of the original file) and shows a pic of approx 7000x4700 pixels. (Taken with a Nikon FM2, and Tamron 300 SP F2.8 lens, using 400 asa color film - hand held at about 1/500th sec. Lovely Bokeh....

Digital cameras are still the way of the future. Silver imaging, for all it's artistic loveliness, is still too much of a hassle - and it's so nice to be able to see what the picture turned out immediately after it's been taken. My own view is that the K10D is just about the perfect camera. I borrowed a friend's K10D and had a bad experience with it but the one I bought has been nothing other than a good friend and a delight operate.

bahadir · Oct 13, 2007, 3:41 AM

I've been using this machine for a week only and therefore only had to recharce once! During my experience I only shot one or two slight OOF pics. and that was the day whenthe battery was completely dried out.I also suspected this issue that youmention. I haven't experienced such a thing since that recharge so far. Btw,the lens attached is sigma 17-70.

mtngal · Oct 13, 2007, 1:32 PM

Interesting finding - I'm going to have to watch that. I have some lenses that backfocus more than others - I wonder if the condition of the battery has had something to do with it, more than the lenses (one lens in particular seems to backfocus quite regularly but isn't completely consistent about it).

I do agree that the quality of the lens makes a bigger difference with the K10 than with the K100, though both cameras do better with better lenses. I've become a big believer that money is better spent on lenses than on cameras, especially now that I have a couple of really good lenses to compare to some not-so-swift lenses.

Robert Barnett · Oct 14, 2007, 12:12 PM

It makes perfect sense to me. Low battery power means that it is going to be slower and that can mean less accurate focus. Think about it. What happens to a cassette player when the batteries get real low, it slows down and so does the cassette playback. Even Pentax makes passing comments about this with their firmware updates, they recommend either using the AC adapter when you do a firmware upgrade or fully charged batteries.

Not a single thing surprising about this. What I find surprising is that people actually think the camera is going work fine on the batteries last legs and that people allow the batteries to get that low to start with. Once my batteries hit the 2/3rds used mark out they come and new fully charged ones go in.

Focusing is also not the only thing that can suffer from low batteries. Writing to the memory card and cause corruption (if the file you are writting).

I use the add-on grip which gives me a second battery, once the main one in the camera goes low it switches to the one in the grip. I also carry two extra fully charged batteries with me and a way to recharge them in the car should an emergcy come up.

Robert

Monza76 · Oct 15, 2007, 9:36 AM

My *istDL definitely misses focus when the batteries are low, I discovered this in June 2006 on my first Twillingate trip. When the battery symbol showed empty (but not blinking) the camera appeared to work fine but all of the images were out of focus. I didn't bother to check for any consistency in the bad focus, I just changed batteries.

Ira

Robert Barnett · Oct 15, 2007, 10:12 AM

I would think that auto focus would be one of the bigger power users of a dSLR camera. I would also imagine that the sensor, anti-shake, dust cleaning and writing to the memory could would be high on the list and of course the use of the LCD screen.

I wonder what would happen if your were to switch to manual focus at the low battery point? I wonder if the low power then would just effect something else or if the camera would then work ok until again the power went too low.

I think it would be interesting to know the power consumption rates of the various parts of the camera.

Robert

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Oct 12, 2007, 8:27 PM	#1
irivlin Member Join Date: Jun 2002 Posts: 42	Sounds like it's impossible but the truth is that my K10D autofocuses more accurately with fully charged batteries. I read a passing reference to this, in a review somewhereand found it hard to believe. - Then I tried it myself - it's absolutely true. I still fail to see how this could be the case but it's proven itself beyond a doubt to me. Has anyone else bumped into this bizarre anomaly? Ian Rivlin

Oct 12, 2007, 9:32 PM	#2
penolta Senior Member Join Date: Apr 2007 Location: California USA Posts: 5,206	Does this happen before the low battery warning appears? If so, perhaps it has something to do with the lens you are using and how much of a load there is on the drive screw?

Oct 12, 2007, 10:06 PM	#3
bigdawg Senior Member Join Date: Feb 2005 Location: Thach Alabama Posts: 14,981	I have the same problem with my Kit lens but my Sigma 100-300 doesn't do it as bad. Dawg

Oct 13, 2007, 12:34 AM	#4
ishino Senior Member Join Date: Oct 2006 Posts: 661	never noticed this, but i have two batteries in my k10d, one in the body and one in the grip and i have yet to drain them both down.

Oct 13, 2007, 2:32 AM	#5
irivlin Member Join Date: Jun 2002 Posts: 42	Never taken a shot with the battery indicator flashing. It's not that big a deal. I mounted the camera onm a tripod and focused on a lens resolution chart, which was 12 ft away. This was when it showed up. If the aperture is stopped down, the fault is hardly visible. I was shooting at F2.8, however and it became very obvious at this aperture. All I have to do is to keep the battery charged up. Just as an aside. It's becoming obvious to me that the resolution of the K10's sensor is far better than most lenses can handle. A "good" lens, at the correct aperture and shutter speed, gives much greater resolution (apparently) on the K10D, than images I've seen on the Canon 5D (12.8 megapixels), where the lens is " a bit suss". It's interesting, because we're all excited about greater and greater megapixels, yet is seems like lenses haven't quite kept up with the megapixel race. Has anyone else experienced this? I'm wondering whether the 22 megapixel Canon EOS 1Ds Mk3 will be wasting some of its resolution, if the lenses can't put the information down on the sensor. Having said all this, I'm still of the opinion that a pic taken on a well set up Leica 35mm camera and using low speed film and a top grade lens, still beats (just) digital SLR cameras. (But the film has to be scanned to an almost ridiculously high resolution to show the medium at its best. I use a Minolta Dimage Sacn Multi Pro. The TIFF image from a 4800DPI scan comes out at about 240 megabytes - ie almost unmanageable. Check out:-http://www.rivlin.com/tamron_sp_300film.jpg It's 5.8 megs (ie, a jpeg of the original file) and shows a pic of approx 7000x4700 pixels. (Taken with a Nikon FM2, and Tamron 300 SP F2.8 lens, using 400 asa color film - hand held at about 1/500th sec. Lovely Bokeh.... Digital cameras are still the way of the future. Silver imaging, for all it's artistic loveliness, is still too much of a hassle - and it's so nice to be able to see what the picture turned out immediately after it's been taken. My own view is that the K10D is just about the perfect camera. I borrowed a friend's K10D and had a bad experience with it but the one I bought has been nothing other than a good friend and a delight operate.

Oct 13, 2007, 3:41 AM	#6
bahadir Senior Member Join Date: Jan 2006 Location: Izmir, Turkey Posts: 6,263	I've been using this machine for a week only and therefore only had to recharce once! During my experience I only shot one or two slight OOF pics. and that was the day whenthe battery was completely dried out.I also suspected this issue that youmention. I haven't experienced such a thing since that recharge so far. Btw,the lens attached is sigma 17-70.

Oct 13, 2007, 1:32 PM	#7
mtngal Senior Member Join Date: Nov 2005 Location: Frazier Park, CA Posts: 16,177	Interesting finding - I'm going to have to watch that. I have some lenses that backfocus more than others - I wonder if the condition of the battery has had something to do with it, more than the lenses (one lens in particular seems to backfocus quite regularly but isn't completely consistent about it). I do agree that the quality of the lens makes a bigger difference with the K10 than with the K100, though both cameras do better with better lenses. I've become a big believer that money is better spent on lenses than on cameras, especially now that I have a couple of really good lenses to compare to some not-so-swift lenses.

Oct 14, 2007, 12:12 PM	#8
Robert Barnett Senior Member Join Date: Mar 2007 Posts: 323	It makes perfect sense to me. Low battery power means that it is going to be slower and that can mean less accurate focus. Think about it. What happens to a cassette player when the batteries get real low, it slows down and so does the cassette playback. Even Pentax makes passing comments about this with their firmware updates, they recommend either using the AC adapter when you do a firmware upgrade or fully charged batteries. Not a single thing surprising about this. What I find surprising is that people actually think the camera is going work fine on the batteries last legs and that people allow the batteries to get that low to start with. Once my batteries hit the 2/3rds used mark out they come and new fully charged ones go in. Focusing is also not the only thing that can suffer from low batteries. Writing to the memory card and cause corruption (if the file you are writting). I use the add-on grip which gives me a second battery, once the main one in the camera goes low it switches to the one in the grip. I also carry two extra fully charged batteries with me and a way to recharge them in the car should an emergcy come up. Robert

Oct 15, 2007, 9:36 AM	#9
Monza76 Senior Member Join Date: Jul 2004 Posts: 4,154	My *istDL definitely misses focus when the batteries are low, I discovered this in June 2006 on my first Twillingate trip. When the battery symbol showed empty (but not blinking) the camera appeared to work fine but all of the images were out of focus. I didn't bother to check for any consistency in the bad focus, I just changed batteries. Ira

Oct 15, 2007, 10:12 AM	#10
Robert Barnett Senior Member Join Date: Mar 2007 Posts: 323	I would think that auto focus would be one of the bigger power users of a dSLR camera. I would also imagine that the sensor, anti-shake, dust cleaning and writing to the memory could would be high on the list and of course the use of the LCD screen. I wonder what would happen if your were to switch to manual focus at the low battery point? I wonder if the low power then would just effect something else or if the camera would then work ok until again the power went too low. I think it would be interesting to know the power consumption rates of the various parts of the camera. Robert