A photo, every twelve seconds. (UPDATE!) March 30, 2008
Posted by tcbp in : News & Rumors , trackbackI obviously missed some things in that Pop Photo review of the Sigma DP1 that I read the other day. They’re saying it takes 12 seconds to save a RAW file to the memory card! I did another quick glance through the article (yeah I really should re-read it fully but I don’t have time right now) and found no mention of what card they were using. I hope they mention in there because that would be sloppy testing to not state what equipment they were using.
Overall their reporting on it is a bit confusing. One shot takes 12 seconds to save, but can it be used during that time? Additionally, a three shot burst (at 3fps) takes 23 seconds to save before the camera can be used again. Obviously it would appear to have too small a buffer and a rather slow write speed since a file is roughly 13MB according to Sigma. If it is as unresponsive as it sounds, and you have to wait that often when shooting RAW frames, I will definitely be passing on this camera. My dinosaur of a camera (1D Mark II) can save a 6.5MB raw file to a Sandisk Ultra II + card in about a second and a half, give or take. CF write speed is faster, but with the larger buffer of the camera it’s not an issue most of the time. Theoretically that means my camera is able to write about 4x faster to my card than whatever card they used with the DP1.
Let’s hope it’s not as bad as it sounds.
Update:
According to various users and some rumors I’m reading, write times for a RAW file may be as short as 2 seconds with a SanDisk Extreme III card. Doesn’t look so bad after all!
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