[Larrymc]

HI Folks,

I rarely need fast write speeds with my K-3 but on occasion I need to use continuous shooting either H or M. I have been using the save to both memory card setting and have had the camera really slowdown a bunch. My question is how much is the write speed slowed by having the camera write to two cards rather than writing sequentially to one card then to the second card upon filling the first? I'm assuming that the K-3 will write to one card then write to the other when set up to write the same data to two cards, so if you are writing a 30mg RAW file you will actually have to write 60mg before any other data is written. Has anyone got any experience with just writing sequentially rather than to both? I have never filled up my 32Gig SD cards. My cards are supposed to write close to 90mbps.

Larry

[Adam]

HI Folks,

I rarely need fast write speeds with my K-3 but on occasion I need to use continuous shooting either H or M. I have been using the save to both memory card setting and have had the camera really slowdown a bunch. My question is how much is the write speed slowed by having the camera write to two cards rather than writing sequentially to one card then to the second card upon filling the first? I'm assuming that the K-3 will write to one card then write to the other when set up to write the same data to two cards, so if you are writing a 30mg RAW file you will actually have to write 60mg before any other data is written. Has anyone got any experience with just writing sequentially rather than to both? I have never filled up my 32Gig SD cards. My cards are supposed to write close to 90mbps.

Larry

Pentax bodies can't yet write in parallel to both slots. What this means is that when you're saving to more than one, the write time roughly doubles. There are some comparative numbers here:
Pentax K-1 Review - Performance and Burst Mode | PentaxForums.com Reviews

I thought we did this test for the K-3 as well, but I can't find it. In any case, real-world performance follows the same trend, but you can expect slightly faster write times on the K-3 since its files are smaller.

[Larrymc]

Pentax bodies can't yet write in parallel to both slots. What this means is that when you're saving to more than one, the write speed roughly doubles. There are some comparative numbers here:
Pentax K-1 Review - Performance and Burst Mode | PentaxForums.com Reviews

I thought we did this test for the K-3 as well, but I can't find it. In any case, real-world performance follows the same trend, but you can expect slightly faster write times on the K-3 since its files are smaller.

Thanks Adam,

I did a search and didn't find anything so that's my reason for the question. I've now set up my K-3 to write sequentially rather than save to both. I'm not using RAW+ so this is probably the best option for me.

Again thanks

Larry

[The Squirrel Mafia]

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

^ There was a test done a couple years back with some interesting results. This page might help you a bit

[angerdan]

Pentax bodies can't yet write in parallel to both slots. What this means is that when you're saving to more than one, the write speed roughly doubles. There are some comparative numbers here:
Pentax K-1 Review - Performance and Burst Mode | PentaxForums.com Reviews

...but you can expect slightly faster write times on the K-3 since its files are smaller.

Do you mean "the write speed approximately halved"? Because booth memory slots are sharing the same USB port (so it's like serial communication).

In the "General Performance" part of the K-1 staff review, K-1 is stated to be writing RAW/RAW+JPG faster than K-3.

[Adam]

Yes, I meant the write time approximately doubles. Thanks!