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06-22-2018, 04:33 PM   #1
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K-1 SD Card Hardware

This page Best Memory Cards For The Pentax K-1 - Alik Griffin discusses how the K-1 SD card Hardware is different between slots.

Slot 1 is actually UHS II hardware but Slot 2 is UHS I.

But the camera does not take advantage of the UHS II hardware and it saves as if UHS I.

Does anyone know why? Has Ricoh ever explained the reason?

I tried to see if it has be asked before but received no hits.

I would love to see Ricoh do a firmware update to enable UHS II support on slot 1 if it is possible.

06-22-2018, 05:09 PM   #2
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QuoteOriginally posted by SirTomster Quote
Slot 1 is actually UHS II hardware but Slot 2 is UHS I.
I wonder how he came to his conclusions regarding slot hardware. He simply makes the statement and says something about measuring rates. If the system does not use UHS II, how would he detect a difference? (BTW, the slow rate is hardly news.) I also wonder why a format on one slot would render a card unusable on the other on his camera, but that such an obvious problem has not been a matter of intense discussion on this site. I also wonder why he is spending time with a camera that has a mirror and which he has never reviewed. BTW, who is Alik Griffin? Is he a social media influencer or just a run-of-the-mill photo blogger?


Steve

Last edited by stevebrot; 06-22-2018 at 05:15 PM.
06-22-2018, 05:16 PM   #3
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From the link above:

QuoteQuote:
About Me

I am a professional freelance commercial / trailer editor. I mostly edit trailers and tv spots for games such as Call of Duty, Destiny, Gears of War with a few Netflix shows thrown in the mix. The other half of my time is spent shooting photography. I am based out of Los Angeles CA.
QuoteQuote:
I’ve been doing these memory card speed tests for several years now and I get a lot of the same questions asked, so I’ll do my best to answer those here.
I guess he looked in the slot and noticed the second row of pins that UHS-II uses.

Last edited by Not a Number; 06-22-2018 at 05:23 PM.
06-22-2018, 06:07 PM   #4
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QuoteOriginally posted by SirTomster Quote
I would love to see Ricoh do a firmware update to enable UHS II support on slot 1 if it is possible.
The K-1 doesn't appear to reach the limits of UHS-I speeds at the moment, so as exciting as this would be, it's unlikely IMO. All UHS-II cards will still work in UHS-I mode, however.


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06-22-2018, 06:48 PM   #5
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QuoteOriginally posted by Adam Quote
The K-1 doesn't appear to reach the limits of UHS-I speeds at the moment, so as exciting as this would be, it's unlikely IMO. All UHS-II cards will still work in UHS-I mode, however.
Could you take a peak at your K-1 and confirm that the slot 1 is UHS II as @Not_a_Number suggests? It was the claim that slot 1 had different hardward than slot 2 that piqued my interest. I had never heard such a thing.


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Last edited by stevebrot; 06-22-2018 at 07:04 PM.
06-22-2018, 07:05 PM - 1 Like   #6
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QuoteOriginally posted by stevebrot Quote
Could you take a peak at your K-1 and confirm that the slot 1 is UHS II as @Not_a_Number suggests?


Steve
I just looked at my K-1 and Slot 1 only has the one row of pins as far as I can see. It is hard to see clearly but I also checked another camera which does have UHS II and there is a second row of small pins in that camera.
06-22-2018, 07:47 PM   #7
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I tried to take a picture of my SD card slots.

This is a K-1 Mark II.

I think there might be two rows there but not sure.

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06-22-2018, 09:32 PM   #8
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QuoteOriginally posted by stevebrot Quote
I had never heard such a thing.
Neither have I. Why would they bother making one SD card slot support UHS-2 and the other only UHS-1?

I've seen cameras support two totally different card hardware standards (eg CF + SD, or XQD + SD), but not require different versions of the same read/write protocols per slot for the same card form factor. It would be weird for Ricoh to do this. But not impossible, I guess. Weird is not unknown to Ricoh.
06-22-2018, 11:12 PM - 1 Like   #9
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maybe it's just simple, they bought a "standard" sd connecttor to put on their hardware. Nobody knows up to know wether the pins are connected to some circuit.
It may be that the "standard" connector is cheaper than a special build with two times UHS I, or this "standard" connector fits better to the circuit, maybe is mechanical more stable than others (maybe that it has 4 solder pads for the mechnic and all others have only three, maybe that he has a hole to use a screw to fix it).

On the other hand it is totally irrelevant whether the connector is uhs I or uhs II because the camera writes only wit 25-30 MB/seconds. Using UHSII needs a different hardware on the processor chip. Therfore it's useless to discuss of uhs I or II, there isn't any chance of a speed-improvement up to 90 MB/sec ore more.
06-22-2018, 11:42 PM   #10
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QuoteOriginally posted by joergens.mi Quote
maybe it's just simple, they bought a "standard" sd connecttor to put on their hardware. Nobody knows up to know wether the pins are connected to some circuit.
It may be that the "standard" connector is cheaper than a special build with two times UHS I, or this "standard" connector fits better to the circuit, maybe is mechanical more stable than others (maybe that it has 4 solder pads for the mechnic and all others have only three, maybe that he has a hole to use a screw to fix it).

On the other hand it is totally irrelevant whether the connector is uhs I or uhs II because the camera writes only wit 25-30 MB/seconds. Using UHSII needs a different hardware on the processor chip. Therfore it's useless to discuss of uhs I or II, there isn't any chance of a speed-improvement up to 90 MB/sec ore more.
This.
I too think it's a supply chain thing.
06-23-2018, 01:18 AM   #11
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Since the SD slots are connected just to USB 2.0, it doesn't matter if they are UHS I or II.
So maximum shared speed for all is just ~35Mbyte/s.
06-23-2018, 03:06 AM   #12
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QuoteOriginally posted by angerdan Quote
Since the SD slots are connected just to USB 2.0,
What leads you to this curious assumption? Are you talking about the camera's connection to a PC, thus using the camera as a card reader?

That's completely unrelated to the way the camera itself accesses the SD cards.


And, no, neither of the SD-card slots is an UHS-II slot. The slots are different, number 1 has two "double contact" springs instead of only single contact spring as numer 2, but this is a mere manufacturing difference, due to the different mechanical properties of the slots. Both might be mounted on the same PCB (printed circuit board), one lying flat on it's surface, the other one with long standoffs and longer "pins".

That's all.

Besides, the camera's write speed (which is limited by the speed the sensor can be read) is much lower than what a decent UHS-1 SD card can deliver.

That the sensor's the "bottleneck" here can be seen when comparing the frame rate achievable with a Nikon D810, which uses the same sensor.
06-23-2018, 05:28 AM   #13
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SD slots are connected via USB 2.0 bus.
Sensor isn't the bottleneck, you can see this when developing DNGs to TIF in the camera or with the long writing times after shooting a series.
Which leads back to the slow USB 2.0 bus which booth card slots have to share.
06-23-2018, 07:18 AM   #14
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This thread leads me to ask: has anyone seen a K-1 tear-down/ dismantling anywhere on the web? Or found a K-1 service manual.

That might answer a lot of the questions raised in this thread.
06-23-2018, 08:01 AM   #15
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QuoteOriginally posted by rawr Quote
This thread leads me to ask: has anyone seen a K-1 tear-down/ dismantling anywhere on the web? Or found a K-1 service manual.

That might answer a lot of the questions raised in this thread.
Yes, Please! Either one would be very interesting. The only thing I remember seeing is the obligatory clear body cover which showed some parts and the equally obligatory camera sliced in half. Something more detailed would tell us a lot.
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