Originally posted by Pentax Lover I have a question to anybody who cares to answer! Here goes:
Is the memory Buffer on a DSLR Software related?
The reason for my asking is because I am interested in the K-5, and according to the Manual for JPEGS is 30 Frames, which is probably more then enough for most things, and I have recently started shooting Raw. So with this Camera, I CANNOT SEE MYSELF USING RAW under such conditions as Sports on the K-5, maybe Wildlife or something like that I could see using Raw
The Things I would use K-5 for are Wildlife, Car Racing at local Dirt Track, Portraits, Macro's or Closeups, and maybe Night time Shooting (Stars, the Moon and such).
Anybody, Please help!
With questions like this. why worry about RAW in the first place? From reading your other posts I can see that you do have a slight issue putting down a coherent story and there might be multiple reasons for that, some not under your control. Let me try to help:
You pose multiple questions here actually:
1. Is a memory buffer software? (on ANY piece of equipment)
2. Can you fit as many RAWs as JPEGs into a memory buffer of a given size?
3. Is shooting RAW more suited to situations that require multiple frames shot in quick succession?
Answers:
1. A memory buffer is a piece of hardware with read/write access controlled by software. The hardware defines how much space there is so how many files of a given size can be stored. The software defines how quickly the files can be written or read back.
The camera will not be ready for the next shot until the sensor-data of the previous shot have been written to the buffer. More hardware (=memory space) means therefore you can fit more images into the buffer and better software(=read/write speed & control) means an image is written to the buffer faster, releasing the camera for the next shot.
2. A RAW file generally has a larger size than a JPEG (although I have seen cases, with lots of noise, where the opposite was true) so you can fit less images on your memory card as you can see by the available images count on the camera. The exact same thing applies to the buffer as it is made out of similar memory chips as the card you stick into your camera.
Do note that JPEG image size fluctuates with content and an image of a uniform blue wall will be tiny while an image containing many shapes & colors & structures will be huge.
With today's pixelcounts of 14MP+ however, differences should not be huge. Most of my camera JPEGs are 7-10 Mb, PEFs are 11-16Mb.
3. As shown above, access to the (hardware) buffer is controlled by software and RAW files will on the whole be larger than JPEGs. It therefore follows that not only will more JPEGs fit inside the buffer, they will also be written and read more quickly because there are less bits&bytes to store, resulting in a faster release of the camera for the next shot.
Although both buffer hardware (memory chip access speeds) and software (memory controller logic) improve continuously, the curve is flattening out and each successive improvement is less impressive in absolute terms.
Wrapping up: if you are really after pure, blistering speed, there are camera's with dual buffers and multiple controllers that do an awesome job but none of these specialized cameras come cheap. If you are varying your shooting techniques on the basis of the subject matter, JPEG will allow you to fire off more shots in a given minute.
The big question is: once you are in that league of keeping your finger down for 30 shots in a row, do you really care that much for quality issues anymore as it seems more about getting the shot? So why do RAW in that case to begin with. Read up on RAW and what you'd need/want it for and decide for yourself.
[EDIT] Reread and found this shocking error in my text: "not only will more RAWs fit inside the buffer". I obviously meant JPEGs so I corrected the mistake. Apologies to all.