RiceHigh's Pentax Blog

RiceHigh 110p · 569 weeks ago

It is not technically that difficult. But the K-3 dual card slots is a cheap implementation. There is no dual card controller actually, Ricoh engineers implemented this feature in a time-multiplexed way.

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Dan Johnson · 569 weeks ago

LOL, you always put your head back in the sand when you notice the Pentax logo. Most of us buy what we want, not what foreign multiconglomerates decide to put their label on. I have the foresight to know I may want a Full Frame camera and have bought great lenses that will work on most brands of DSLR (full frame or cropped) including Leica.

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Dan Johnson · 569 weeks ago

I bet dollars to doughnuts that Ricoh pretends they didn't know the 645Z does this with the FluCard, we just need to wait until an honest photographer overpays for an amature quality medium format!

Anonimity is Great · 569 weeks ago

Well, is there any proofs that the nikon d7000/d7100 don't do the same thing?

1 reply · active 569 weeks ago

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Dan Johnson · 569 weeks ago

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Guirune · 569 weeks ago

The d800 behave exactly the same way : http://forum.nikonrumors.com/discussion/2436/writ...

5 replies · active 568 weeks ago

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Anonimity is Great · 569 weeks ago

Well, there you have it. The $2500+ Nikon camera doesn't write to its memory cards faster than the $1300 Pentax. What do you think, Rice?

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Catchalive · 568 weeks ago

He won't reply! Have you ever listened to him criticize another brand than Ricoh/Pentax? :-)

El Mustachio · 568 weeks ago

To be fair, that's not exactly what the content in the link says. The super-speedy compact flash has its own controller and will always be faster than the SD. If you ask the camera to write to both, the SD card will take longer.

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zosX · 568 weeks ago

Yeah, but this caught my eye:

"iFixit has a teardown of a D600 and its mainboard shows only one storage controller for the camera's dual SD slots. So I guess physically it makes sense that the writes will be in sequential order, or at most sequentially pipelined."

So even the FF D600 cannot write to both cards at once if this is true.

Guirune · 568 weeks ago

No, for the d800 in the example it takes 7s for the compact flash and 10s for the sd separately, and 17s in backup mode (sd+compact flash) the two times add perfectly.

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Bukaj · 569 weeks ago

And how does the A7 handle two card slots? Wait... nevermind.

Klaus · 568 weeks ago

I tried my k3 with a Sandisk Extreme (32GB Slot 1, 16GB Slot 2). Taking and storing 20 Pictures in High Speed Mode tock ~35 sec. - same for 1 card MOde and storing Raw/JPG on esparate cards.

So I cannot confirm the observations

Catchalive · 568 weeks ago

I just do the test with two 16Gb Sandisk SD cards. the result is WRONG!
I shot until the buffer limit (continuous for about 20 seconds until it slow) + 1 shot. Shooting time = 20 seconds. Total (shooting + storage time) = 50 seconds
Same result for 1 SD card or 2 SD cards used....

1 reply · active 568 weeks ago

Catchalive · 568 weeks ago

Ok!! Sorry!!!! reading it again and reading romay's post below I get it now!
The chinese guy find that to write X data, you need Y seconds; and to write 2X data, you need 2Y seconds?!?!?! errrr..... it's logical. If your PC has 2 DD, it will take twice the time to write the same data on the 2 drives versus 1 drive....

romay · 568 weeks ago

Guys, you did not get the point. You have to store an identical copy on both SD cards. OF COURSE it won't be slower when you store JPEG on one card and RAW on the other. In fact, if it is just as fast as storing both on the same card, it CONFIRMS the original finding, where data is written sequentially.
I have to say, I'm pretty disappointed. I relied on the 2-SD card feature to clear my buffer faster when storing JPEG and RAW separately. :(

romay · 568 weeks ago

To be perfectly fair, this behaviour seems to be standard among all DSLR manufcaturers.As Guirune pointed out, even the D800 which is like twice as expensive as the K3, behaves like that. I think the reason is that it's not just about adding a second controller, like Rice said. You also need to feed those 2 controllers, which means the image chip needs to support two external high-speed data lanes which most, if not all of the current DSLR image processors don't have.
Rather disappointing, yes (I totally hoped for clearing my raw buffer twice as fast with 2 SD cards), but it's not fair to criticize Pentax for their first implementation of dual SD cards not behaving vastly superior to everyone else's.

1 reply · active 568 weeks ago

Thomas · 568 weeks ago

You nailed it.

And yes, RiceHigh does make a valid point here because many, me included, may have assumed that the camera would be able to write to both cards effectively simultaneously. "Big" computers can do that, too

Dan Johnson · 568 weeks ago

I come hear to find out about Pentax DSLRs (good or bad) I can go to other sites to compare Canon to Nikon, if the FF Samsung writes to 2 cards on 2 chanels as well as having built in ac WiFi, NFC, and USB-3.1 or faster RiceHigh probably woun't post it hear. Because most photographers google this site to find out about Pentax (good or bad) not Sony.

4 replies · active 568 weeks ago

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romay · 568 weeks ago

Dan, no offense, but you may want to work on your english.