Memory card writing speed

I have been viewing the forums since last fall and the info is great. On a trip to Cost Rica last fall I used my D100 in an Ike housing. That was the first time I shot RAW images. Even using a Lexar Pro CF card I was amazed on the time it took to write an image to the flash card, almost 40seconds. I have not gotten the firmware upgrade but plan to do so soon. Is this a normal writing speed and how much improvement can I expect with the upgrade??

thanks

Mike

Check out

http://www.robgalbraith.com/bins/multi_pag...p?cid=6007-6020

Looks like it should be more in the range of 3-4 seconds per NEF. This data is from firmware verision 2 but there is no way that version 2 increases speed 10x. Sounds like to me either the camera or the card has something wrong with it.

Definitely something wrong. I didn't notice any significant wait when shooting D100 RAW with a Lexar 80x card.

Mike, I'd bet London to a brick you were using compressed RAW. The d100 is phenomenally slow to compress/write RAW files, while an uncompressed RAW writes in about 3 seconds. This is one of the areas where the d70 has a significant edge over the d100.

I second that. Make sure you weren't shooting compressed NEF.

I recommend you check out my article on digital media here at Wetpixel. I did a cost vs speed comparison for the more popular DSLR cameras. It's in the features section here.

Cheers

James

Mike, I'd bet London to a brick you were using compressed RAW. The d100 is phenomenally slow to compress/write RAW files, while an uncompressed RAW writes in about 3 seconds. This is one of the areas where the d70 has a significant edge over the d100.

The D100 compressed NEFs are lossy as well. You absolutely don't want to use those!

You guys are right it turns out that the camera was set for compressed NEF. Switching to uncompressed markedly increased the write speed.

thanks for the help

Mike

I made the same mistake when I first shot UW RAW on my D100 almost exactly 2 years ago! And a quick email to wetpixel sorted out my problem too!

Alex