[Arpe]

I have found recently that if I'm pushing the boundaries of hand-holdableness due to slow shutter speed it pays to take 2 or 3 using high fps, which is within the buffer range obviously. I often find that if the first is blurry the 2nd or 3rd isn't. Try it.

[BrendanPK]

Why do they handicap their otherwise excellent cameras?

I remember that they already had one entry level camera whith extremely small buffer. Every reviewer was pointing to this.

Now K-5. It's almost useless for action. Burst for one second only. And only 4 frames in higher ISOs. Give me a break. Why did they bother with those high frame rates and new AF modes at all. They are not going to be useful with this small crippled buffer.

Now we again have the situation where Pentax entry level camera outperforms their flagship model...

Yes and no. Its no 20+ Frame buffer, and a pregressivly smaller buffer for higher ISO's is a small kick in the groin, but after shooting today its not nearly as bad as say the *istD was and I shot every sport out there with that camera too. The buffer clears fast with a fast card, and if you limit to short bursts (no spray-n-pray here) You will be more than happy I think.
I just shot sports tonight (volleyball) with the K5 and am so happy my writer (I work for newspapers) was wondering if I was on something. My GF too when I got home and was so giddy.
That said, YES I would prefer a bigger buffer, but I'd rather have all the other features than another K7

[BrendanPK]

Most photojournalists, with editors breathing down their necks to meet deadlines, will likely use JPEG out-of-camera.

But hobbyists and freelancers who want to get the best possible look from their photos may use RAW, so its all a matter of personal choice.

I am a freelance Photojournalist. I somewhat agree.
Most of my staff friends shoot Jpg, I shoot a lot of RAW, Exception is daytime sports and some other sim. situations.
That said I just shot 12800ISO in Jpg with AWB in the new K5 for a indoor volleyball game and WOW, I may go back to shooting mostly Jpg's (that and the 20-25mb RAW files kill me)
If I am working on tight deadline I shoot Jpg for speed, Start to finish its just faster (Import, Preview, edit etc) Not as good but good enough for a tight deadline.

[secateurs]

The numbers I posted previously were with Sandisk 8GB Extreme III 30MB/s SDHC. Per your request I used the same card but lowered jpg quality to 3 stars and size to 6MB. Buffer full went from 27 shots at max size/IQ to 35 shots at the reduced size/IQ. I don't think the card has much to do with filling the buffer but it helps a lot when writing that full buffer to the card and returning to a ready state.

Thanks imtheguy. Wondering whether you could do one more test for me? I would like to know whether the buffer still fills at 2MP, highest IQ on low (3 FPS) setting.

The reason is i would like to be able to make "stop animation" sort of video clips by shooting continuously at low FPS. Each 24 frames of shooting (8 sec at 3fps) equals 1 sec of video. The sort of thing i've done before is clouds and weather patterns.

Also, when the buffer does fill and the shooting slows to 2 FPS, are the shots very evenly spaced apart, or does it speed up and slow down slightly? (This is assuming the camera is in full manual mode)

Thanks for your help!

[imtheguy]

Thanks imtheguy. Wondering whether you could do one more test for me? I would like to know whether the buffer still fills at 2MP, highest IQ on low (3 FPS) setting.

The reason is i would like to be able to make "stop animation" sort of video clips by shooting continuously at low FPS. Each 24 frames of shooting (8 sec at 3fps) equals 1 sec of video. The sort of thing i've done before is clouds and weather patterns.

Also, when the buffer does fill and the shooting slows to 2 FPS, are the shots very evenly spaced apart, or does it speed up and slow down slightly? (This is assuming the camera is in full manual mode)

Thanks for your help!

Low setting is 1.6fps according to the book and my rough count confirms that. By definition, you can take 16MB/(3 asterisk IQ) shots continuously at 1.6fps until the card fills. 2MB shots do not challenge the low speed at all.

Its more interesting at 7fps whereby 2MB/**** shots fill the buffer at about 40 shots but only slows to about 2.5-3fps as it writes to the card after filling the buffer. That speed seems to hold forever and it sounds consistant but I could not measure it. I don't know how you could start it at that speed unless you find a debug mode to disable the buffer.

[brecklundin]

love this thread because I never knew higher ISO shots are larger file sizes, really I never pay attention to file sizes. And I certainly would never have connected the FPS fall-off due shooting at higher ISO, again thanks to the larger file size.

I also agree it's sad that there is no so much marketing wonk speech in even product spec sheets, not that they haven't always been there but given the complexity of cameras today it's all but impossible to ask enough question to find out everything you really need to know upfront. It's pretty much to the point where one needs to wait a year just to read enough about a body to determine what it does and does not do...even after downloading and reading the manual(s).

[dgaies]

love this thread because I never knew higher ISO shots are larger file sizes, really I never pay attention to file sizes. And I certainly would never have connected the FPS fall-off due shooting at higher ISO, again thanks to the larger file size.

The above is certainly true; the file size for a DNG raw file grows from about 18 to 32 MB as you go from low to high ISO (the exact file size depends on the content of the image).

However, this is more going on than the increased file size that is slowing down the number of images than can be taken before a pause.

I took a series of burst shot (7fps) at ISO from 100 to 51200 (all JPEG NR turned off). I found that from 100-3200 I could get 8 frames before the pause and between 6400-51200 I could only get 4.

So out of curiosity I decided to test 1/3 stops between 3200 and 6400. At both 1/3 stops in between (4000 and 5000 if I recall correctly), I could still capture 8 RAW shots. The only conclusion I can draw from this is that something is being done to the RAW images at 6400 and above that is slowing things down. I might speculate that it's some kind of NR to the RAW file at 6400 and above, but that is just a guess as I have no idea what's going on inside my "black box".

[simico]

Simply being out at a restaurant bar with a large group of friends... something is almost always going on when you're with a group of 30+ people!

So you "machine gun" all of them at 8 fps or what?

[garyk]

My view of pentax and af is. When they think the af is up to the standards. They will increase the buffer and let it roll. All this talk about af is ok. But doesn't it tell you Pentax is not confident enought yet to let go with the extra memory. I think if you step back and look at it. If Pentax were up there and ready they would have a camera that competed with canon and nikon. In the pro-summer action protography market.
I think that will be the next step for Pentax. My prediction is in two years they will have it down good enough to let go and start a real pro-summer line. It is small steps that get you there. They know it. Playing it safe and turning out a very good product that doesn't promise much is a good thing now for Pentax.
I think the k-7 was a prototype. Let go to soon. But none the less it showed the body was there. Now the k-5 and next It will be really nice. I think for my shooting need it will be there In two years.
Nothing fancy and not the best but ready for the serious amatuers

[glanglois]

I have found recently that if I'm pushing the boundaries of hand-holdableness due to slow shutter speed it pays to take 2 or 3 using high fps, which is within the buffer range obviously. I often find that if the first is blurry the 2nd or 3rd isn't. Try it.

I've a Nikon P&S or two that use Best Shot Selection - hold the shutter release down for a handful of shots and the camera will select/save the sharpest of the lot.

I would use that a great deal.

I got some very decent interior shots at 1/10 or 1/8 second with an unstablized P&S. If we add SR, I suspect we'd regularly get success at 1/4 or better by banging off a half dozen shots. I do that now on occasion but it's rather a pain to review and delete in PP, not to mention the storage at 100MB per. I have no interest in 32GB cards ..... until they drop to USD $25.

[LDevil]

So it looks that when shooting in RAW@ISO>6400 buffer fills up after 4 frames. But what happened after then? What is the average FPS after first 4 photos? Can somebody count how many RAW photos can be captured in e.g. 3 seconds? It would be nice if a stopwatch will be photographed during such test - thanks to this it will be easy to say how long you have to wait for saving photo from buffer to card.

[imtheguy]

All settings to default, DNG, iso400 gets 8 in slightly over a second then 3 every five seconds evenly spaced. iso6400 pops out 4 in less than a second then 3 every five seconds consistant but every 10 seconds or so it would speed up for a couple shots giving 4-5 in the 5 second span. This was done with lots of light to make sure shutter speed never interfered.

[LDevil]

Thanks a lot imtheguy!

[Col]

PENTAX K-5? ?????????????????PENTAX
New firmware to increase RAW burst to 20 at ISO100... don't know how these guys do this. (originally posted on DPR by krg)

[K10DK7]

PENTAX K-5? ?????????????????PENTAX
New firmware to increase RAW burst to 20 at ISO100... don't know how these guys do this. (originally posted on DPR by krg)

An English link

Google ½Ķ

Sorry for no active link! Not sure how to do it here.

p.s. that's clever, its automatic!

Best regards