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04-19-2019, 09:18 PM   #16
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I don't see how it could possibly clear the buffer faster than an appropriately fast card. I'm not a physicist, but it doesn't make sense for the sd card to magically speed up the image processor so that the buffer which is before it in the chain will speed up. It's like upgrading your graphics on a computer by getting a better monitor - a good monitor is better than a crappy one, but if you already have a decent monitor then you need to upgrade your graphics card, not the monitor.

If it had an effect it would also very definitely affect the buffer in the lower speed settings as the buffer is dynamic - it doesn't wait till the buffer fills up before the image processor starts, as soon as there is data in the buffer the image processor kicks in and starts running - it's called 'first in - first out' or FIFO. If the buffer were somehow clearing faster because of the new memory card then the number of shots you can take before the buffer is hit would increase.

Those cards would make a difference with the latest cameras like the Sony A9 and the EOS R series cameras where they have both very large buffers and extremely fast image processing - and they work faster with faster SD cards because the image processor is faster than the write speed of the SD card - this is not true of Pentax cameras which have a much slower image processor.

As for lower capacity cards, possibly useful, but not for obvious reasons. You'll fill them up faster, so you'll empty them (and hopefully format them) more often, you'll lose less if they fail, they're cheaper to replace if they develop faults or slow down. None of these are inherent advantages, but when I was doing commercial shoots I tended to carry multiple 8gb cards rather than a single 64 or 128gb card - for stills they were plenty large, and it made it easier to back stuff up on the fly and if you make a point of swapping and backing up cards during a day long commercial shoot you will have the shots backed up and viewable before the end of the shoot.

All that said, if you feel that it will help, go buy a bunch of the latest fastest cards and check the speed difference, I'd be very surprised if you get anything at all back for your money.

04-19-2019, 11:29 PM   #17
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QuoteOriginally posted by sqrrl Quote
I don't see how it could possibly clear the buffer faster than an appropriately fast card. I'm not a physicist, but it doesn't make sense for the sd card to magically speed up the image processor so that the buffer which is before it in the chain will speed up. It's like upgrading your graphics on a computer by getting a better monitor - a good monitor is better than a crappy one, but if you already have a decent monitor then you need to upgrade your graphics card, not the monitor.

If it had an effect it would also very definitely affect the buffer in the lower speed settings as the buffer is dynamic - it doesn't wait till the buffer fills up before the image processor starts, as soon as there is data in the buffer the image processor kicks in and starts running - it's called 'first in - first out' or FIFO. If the buffer were somehow clearing faster because of the new memory card then the number of shots you can take before the buffer is hit would increase.

Those cards would make a difference with the latest cameras like the Sony A9 and the EOS R series cameras where they have both very large buffers and extremely fast image processing - and they work faster with faster SD cards because the image processor is faster than the write speed of the SD card - this is not true of Pentax cameras which have a much slower image processor.

As for lower capacity cards, possibly useful, but not for obvious reasons. You'll fill them up faster, so you'll empty them (and hopefully format them) more often, you'll lose less if they fail, they're cheaper to replace if they develop faults or slow down. None of these are inherent advantages, but when I was doing commercial shoots I tended to carry multiple 8gb cards rather than a single 64 or 128gb card - for stills they were plenty large, and it made it easier to back stuff up on the fly and if you make a point of swapping and backing up cards during a day long commercial shoot you will have the shots backed up and viewable before the end of the shoot.

All that said, if you feel that it will help, go buy a bunch of the latest fastest cards and check the speed difference, I'd be very surprised if you get anything at all back for your money.
Yeah I'm not sure I quite like your analogy here, as a PC gamer going from a 60hz monitor to 144hz is night and day difference. You are now experiencing the full potential of your graphics card (albeit same graphical settings). The overall experience (especially for certain genres like fps) is night and day difference! In this case the monitor held back what the graphics processor was fully capable of doing. A little like having an excellent source for music (cd player) a crap amp and high end speakers, the amp is throttling the full potential of the speakers (ok the source equipment is probably not so important... but you get the point).

I don't know what to think, but this professional shooter does need to invest in some new cards so I might just get some lower capacity yet higher speed cards and do some testing against my 'older' 95mb/s extreme pro sandisk cards'. It might be a sole perpetrator who is running the rumour mill that a 300mb/s card clears buffer faster than 95mb/s cards but I am sure I have heard it mentioned here and in one or two camera facebook Pentaxian specific facebook groups (to being true)... Clearing buffer quickly is actually more important to me than sd card capacity. I shot a wedding yesterday, over 1000 images shot, that's slightly more than 64gb in RAW can manage (and that's being conservative and timing shots). One guest reported their wedding shooter took... 12,000 shots on the day LMAO! Yeah... ok... that's ridiculous
So yeah, if a high speed 300mb at 16gb vs a 95mb/s at 64gb is the same price, I might not flinch as much as some...

Be nice though to get some conclusive evidence (I'm talking youtube video of two K-1's, both same settings, one with 95mb/s card, the other 300mb/s card, press shutter on both, see the buffer hit, let go and watch which orange light goes off first.
04-19-2019, 11:58 PM   #18
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Yeah, I have a gaming machine too - If your graphics card is a business desktop job which only outputs 30hz or 60hz then what will the 144hz monitor get you? - That's the analogy I'm giving you. You're assuming that the graphics card must be top flight - it's not.

Pentax did not sneak in a top flight next generation graphics processing chip and just absent-mindedly fail to tell anybody. They might be bad at advertising, but they're not plain stupid. The graphics chip will be running at a clock speed which can't be overclocked without some real high end technical pokery jiggery, a new sd card just isn't going to do much to speed the camera up past the factory specs.

Honest question - I've shot a bunch of gig's with a a whole bunch of cameras including my Kp, which has the same graphics chip as your K1 with a smaller file size, thus it can take more photos before it hits the buffer - I've only ever hit the buffer a couple of times as I tend to time my shots and i consciously avoid hitting the buffer as it means i might miss shots at critical moments - though admittedly i only tend to take 5-700 frames in a day where some people I know take thousands.

My question - if you want to use the camera machine gun style at the highest frame rate - why on earth would you buy a Pentax? If you don't want to do that then why would you care how fast the buffer clears?

I like my Pentax cameras, and there's some things the brand is renowned for, high capacity high frame rate shooting ain't one of them.
04-20-2019, 02:51 AM - 1 Like   #19
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QuoteOriginally posted by BruceBanner Quote
I know that there is a limit to write speeds, and that using cards faster than 95mb/s seems pointless, but I think I read somewhere that faster cards can actually be important by significantly recovering the camera and clearing the buffer faster?
Is there any truth to this?
Has any actual reputable testing been done on this matter?
No card which is faster than the io-bus of the camera can decrease the buffer clearing time.
There's no general connection between cards faster than 95Mb/s and faster buffer clearing.
There are so many tests that i wonder if you did research the topic before this thread.
Pentax K-3 II SD Card Write Speed Comparison of Fastest Memory Cards for the Pentax K3 II Digital Camera - Camera Memory Speed Comparison & Performance tests for SD and CF cards


QuoteOriginally posted by BruceBanner Quote
When Pentax release specs about their cameras they're not going to go that much into detail about it all, just how many burst is possible before reaching buffer.
All I know is there I have read user reporting that faster cards can clear that buffer quicker and get the user back to taking shots again, a pretty serious claim if true.
I'm wondering if anyone has done some testing to prove it, a youtube video or something
No camera manufacturer gives performance details of the memory bus. Since it depends on the protocols of all involved components.
Faster cards are not slower than cards which ale less fast.
There are a lot of professional benchmarks around the world wide web, even for Pentax.
Best Memory Cards For The Pentax K-1 - Alik Griffin
Memory Cards for Cameras | Memory Card Guru


QuoteOriginally posted by BruceBanner Quote
So, I'm sure I've heard from a number of people say that the new Lexar 300mb/s cards clear the buffer quicker, but of course no difference in fps or when you encounter the buffer, it just recovers quicker.
Are most of you saying this is likely placebo or impossible, because the sciencey stuff you know I don't follow very well.
I'm also curious if there is any benefit from writing to lower capacity cards vs higher?
Like... I wouldn't expect so... but writing to 4 or 8gb cards (same speeds) to their 64-128gb sized cousins, no difference at all in that respect?
The Lexar 2000x 300Mb/s cards are old, they are from 2014. And 300Mb/s is only the maximum sequential read speed.
And the buffer clearing time depends first of the internal bus, second of the speed of the uses memory card.
Faster cards can even make the camera write less fast, when there are severeal protocols used like UHS/UHS-II.

The capacity itself doesn't make any difference to the write speed.

But the technology of the NAND memory, which goes from SLC -> MLC -> TLC -> QLC. QLC offers the lowest endurance and performance and is used in newest memory cards. Most cards use cheap TLC and high quality cards still use MLC.
Differences Among SSD NAND Flash Memory: QLC/SLC/MLC/TLC - Rene.E Laboratory

04-20-2019, 02:54 AM   #20
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QuoteOriginally posted by sqrrl Quote
Yeah, I have a gaming machine too - If your graphics card is a business desktop job which only outputs 30hz or 60hz then what will the 144hz monitor get you? - That's the analogy I'm giving you. You're assuming that the graphics card must be top flight - it's not.

Pentax did not sneak in a top flight next generation graphics processing chip and just absent-mindedly fail to tell anybody. They might be bad at advertising, but they're not plain stupid. The graphics chip will be running at a clock speed which can't be overclocked without some real high end technical pokery jiggery, a new sd card just isn't going to do much to speed the camera up past the factory specs.

Honest question - I've shot a bunch of gig's with a a whole bunch of cameras including my Kp, which has the same graphics chip as your K1 with a smaller file size, thus it can take more photos before it hits the buffer - I've only ever hit the buffer a couple of times as I tend to time my shots and i consciously avoid hitting the buffer as it means i might miss shots at critical moments - though admittedly i only tend to take 5-700 frames in a day where some people I know take thousands.

My question - if you want to use the camera machine gun style at the highest frame rate - why on earth would you buy a Pentax? If you don't want to do that then why would you care how fast the buffer clears?

I like my Pentax cameras, and there's some things the brand is renowned for, high capacity high frame rate shooting ain't one of them.
Well.. your analogy has slightly changed, and I agree with you now, whereas before I felt it was misleading (even coming from someone who has owned naff gfx cards but upgraded to a 144hz panel and reaped the benefits, it was literally like playing with a new gfx card ).

Well, it is seldom I touch the buffer myself, the odd wedding and concert shooting might thrash it, which is why I dual wield as well, so when one hits the buffer I can pick up the other and carry on.

I don't want to steer this thread off topic and onto techniques but there are plenty of reasons to hit buffer that have nothing to do with skill or spamming but to do with seeking the absolute highest image quality moment possible in conjunction with risking a certain amount of luck.

Lets give an example;

You're at a concert, shooting a heavy metal concert, guitar players moving fast, singer bopping etc. Now... you could choose to take the shot at f5.6, 1/200 and then bring in a high amount of grain to the image... BUT... you are guaranteed more keepers that way (albeit perhaps 'standard' or 'average' in content and effect/quality.

You could instead drop shutter speed to 1/50, f1.8 that shot, which would then lower the ISO significantly. The only issue is that you are at mercy from a degree of chance (which can be lessoned through experience and if you know the music/songs can predict some 'stationary moments'. Thus you just simply take more shots, which I think is the absolute most significant advantage of the digital age over film. You will burst 10 shots, one of which everything comes together... subject still enough for 1/50, focus of f1.8 is right where you want it, there is a more dramatic depth of field to the shot, the shot looks great and stomps all over the aforementioned 'stopped down grainy safe shot'.

I go between the two places, getting the safe ones first and then 'trying my luck' at the latter approach.

Should I moan about Pentax (which I have not once mentioned here my dissatisfaction with)? I just simply like working around issues and learning. Switching to Jpg only solves the buffer issue a lot and I do often do that, just sometimes not weddings and concerts (where I have two cameras with me anyway). I prolly hit buffer issues maybe 5% of my time using Pentax, the rest of my work is far more relaxed, studio sessions and landscape work. Pentax is incredible value and even if I knew the AF and buffer short comings of Pentax before I invested in (which I did not) I probably would still have come onboard anyway as weddings and concerts is not really the main financial avenue I am seeking professionally.

But you know we all like to know what shortcomings can be circumnavigated and minimised is all the point this thread is asking. Are the rumours nonsense or is there something in it? Can a 300mb/sec card clear the buffer significantly faster than a 95mb/s card, curious minds want to know. Either I am mad (imagining things), or there are a few Pentaxians who have tried 300mb/sec cards and felt compelled to throw their 2 cents in and suggest they are faster for buffer recovery... or they are lying or suffering placebo.

---------- Post added 04-20-19 at 08:33 PM ----------

QuoteOriginally posted by angerdan Quote
No card which is faster than the io-bus of the camera can decrease the buffer clearing time.
There's no general connection between cards faster than 95Mb/s and faster buffer clearing.
There are so many tests that i wonder if you did research the topic before this thread.
Pentax K-3 II SD Card Write Speed Comparison of Fastest Memory Cards for the Pentax K3 II Digital Camera - Camera Memory Speed Comparison & Performance tests for SD and CF cards



No camera manufacturer gives performance details of the memory bus. Since it depends on the protocols of all involved components.
Faster cards are not slower than cards which ale less fast.
There are a lot of professional benchmarks around the world wide web, even for Pentax.
Best Memory Cards For The Pentax K-1 - Alik Griffin
Memory Cards for Cameras | Memory Card Guru



The Lexar 2000x 300Mb/s cards are old, they are from 2014. And 300Mb/s is only the maximum sequential read speed.
And the buffer clearing time depends first of the internal bus, second of the speed of the uses memory card.
Faster cards can even make the camera write less fast, when there are severeal protocols used like UHS/UHS-II.

The capacity itself doesn't make any difference to the write speed.

But the technology of the NAND memory, which goes from SLC -> MLC -> TLC -> QLC. QLC offers the lowest endurance and performance and is used in newest memory cards. Most cards use cheap TLC and high quality cards still use MLC.
Differences Among SSD NAND Flash Memory: QLC/SLC/MLC/TLC - Rene.E Laboratory
Thanks I'll look at those links.
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