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Monday, February 01, 2010

K-x Body Vibration Issue - Case Studies

In my last K-x review, I reported that the K-x is a Shake Addition (!) DSLR as found practically in the field with more blurred pictures were resulted when shot handheld at lower light. Today, I've come across two posts and test demonstrations with comparison pictures posted at the DPR Pentax forum that other K-x users do find similar problem (but of different phenomenons and possible causes, will discuss a bit more below..).

First of all, the OP of the thread below found that his K-m is consistently more stable than his K-x:-

http://forums.dpreview.com/forums/read.asp?forum=1036&message=34327386

He then concluded that it's the serious mirror slap vibration the culprit, as SR can reduce and compensate for the vibration somehow after the SR was turned on, in his test.

Then, in the same thread, another poster reported the "same", just for the Shake Addition tendency of the K-x, but not for the same reason and cause as found:-

http://forums.dpreview.com/forums/read.asp?forum=1036&message=34330249

Interestingly, the second K-x user who posted found that it's the SR the culprit, but not the vigorous mirror slap, if any!

Well, here is the 3rd K-x user who can give his comments, i.e., me! :-) I found that the mirror slap of the K-x is not as gentle as the K-m and actually cause more vibration. I did also find, for times, that the K-x' SR is not as good and effective as the K-m's. But I do not think neither my K-x behaves as extreme as what the above users' K-xes do for both the mirror vibration and the SR (a bug or defective sample?).

While this K-x Shake Addition Issue is yet to be investigated further, it is just so difficult to predict its behaviour(s) and it seems that different units and different samples do vary in an erratic way, which is No Good and actually a really bad thing as there are issues anyway. :-(

Comments (6)

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Actually also the older models had a tendency to add shake under various circumstances. Best is still in the lens, if you can migitate the problem of not having stabilized fast primes.
I turned away from body stabi, it is just to unreliable. It might work, it might even work under most circumstances but sometimes when it is critical it fails. And that sucks.
Everyones experience with SR will be uniquely theirs because the person taking the shot is the major part of the control system.
So the same camera in the hands of a different operator will give different results.
Expect large variation of reviews and large variations of lenses that "work" well with SR and others that don't.
Most of this will be due to variation in the user's ability to hold the lens/camera consistently between each camera/lens combination.
i haven't properly tested the efficacy of the internal SR, however I did notice that the shutter mechanism is very strong and causes a lot of vibration when shooting.
On the other hand, with SR on, I've been able to take some great (i.e. not blurry) pictures in low light with only the kit lens and speed 1/30s. I don't think I have a super-steady hand though.
My experience on taking photos with K-x SR on/off is a bit positive. For example, with SR ON, I can take sharp
pictures with chance two out of three, at shutter speed 1/20s with my 18-55mm kit lens zoomed to the far end.
The chance will be dropped to about one out of five if SR is off. I guess the SR gives you 1.5 stop gain in shutter
speed. I've tried both firmware 1.01 and 1.02. The results are nearly the same.
SR: short range or slow release??
I had this problem on my K-x SR off seemed to solve it. But then why buy a DSLR with IBIS when you have to turn it off. It was not as severe as some have had, but I sold the K-x as it annoyed me. Yet another great Pentax QC story. After that I bought a K-r..oops hit again with FF in tungsten.

Let me know when Pentax release a DSLR that doesn't have any major problems.

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