Arctic Exposure

Pentax has released a firmware upgrade to the Pentax K-5. This allocates more RAM to be used when you use continuous drive mode so you can do longer bursts before the buffer is filled up and the shooting speed slows down.

With the 1.00 firmware you get about 7-9 in RAW format (with either PNG or PEF), but after the upgrade you get around 25, which is a big difference (1 second to 3 seconds of burst). With JPEG I got the same amount, and with RAW + JPEG I got 25 as well.

I used the SanDisk Extreme III 4GB card which I get 20MB per second from when I copy the pictures and videos to my PC via a card reader, the small one that came with the cards (I've got three of these cards). I'll be upgrading and buying a few SanDisk Extreme III 30MB/p Edition 16GB which should, as the name says, be 50% faster, so I'll do a new test then to see if this changes the frame count in continuous drive mode since the camera then might be able to empty the buffer memory faster. This of course depends on what write speed the camera has to the SD cards, if the cards are faster.

Also, on the 4GB cards I have room for about 117 RAW files or 5:25 of 1080p video in full quality, so the 16GB cards will let me photograph or record video longer before running out of space.