Pentax K200D Review: 10. Performance: Digital Photography Review

Timings & File Sizes

The K200D has improved speedwise in almost all areas over its predecessor but is still not quite up there with the quickest cameras in its class. Especially the power off to shot and record review times are a little slower than average. Having said that the K200D never feels sluggish and is certainly acceptably quick for most everyday shooting situations.

Timing Notes: All times calculated as an average of three operations. Unless otherwise stated all timings were made on a 3872 x 2592 JPEG *** (approx. 4,100 KB per image).

The media used for these tests were:

4 GB SanDisk Extreme Ducati Edition
2 GB Lexar Pro 133x SD card

Action	Details	Time, secs (4 GB SanDisk)	Time, secs (2 GB Lexar)
Power Off to On *1		0.5	0.5
Power Off to Shot		0.6	0.6
Sleep to On		0.5	0.5
Power On to Off		0.3	0.3
Record Review *2	RAW	1.7	1.7
Record Review *2	JPEG	1.7	1.7
Play *3	RAW	0.8	0.9
Play *3	JPEG	0.8	0.9
Play Image to Image	RAW	0.3	0.3
Play Image to Image	JPEG	0.3	0.3

*1	This is the time from power on to the recording information display being shown on the LCD monitor. Note that this is slightly slower than the Off to Shot time.
*2	Time taken from the shutter release being pressed to the review image being displayed on the LCD monitor.
*3	The image is displayed as a slightly pixelated version almost instantly. The quoted figure is the time it takes for the high res image to be displayed.

Continuous Drive mode

To test continuous mode the camera had the following settings: Manual Focus, Manual Exposure (1/320 sec, F5.6), ISO 200. Measurements were taken from audio recordings of the tests. Media used were the same as above.

The tests carried out below measured the following results for JPEG and RAW:

Frame rate - Initial frame rate
Number of frames - Number of frames in a burst
Buffer full rate - Frame rate if shutter release held after burst (buffer full)
Next burst - How soon after the burst it is fully written to the CF (indicator goes out)

Burst of JPEG Large/*** images - Continuous Hi

Timing	2 GB SanDisk Extreme III SD	2 GB Lexar Pro 133x SD
Frame rate (average)	2.7 fps	2.6 fps
Number of frames	6	5
Buffer full rate	1.6 fps *	1.8 fps *
Next burst	4.6	4.6

* After the buffer has run full you don't get a consistent number of frames per second but a 'fairly random sequence' of shots. The number stated in the table is the average fps for this sequence.

Burst of JPEG Large/*** images - Continuous Lo

Timing	2 GB SanDisk Extreme III SD	2 GB Lexar Pro 133x SD
Frame rate (average)	1.2 fps	1.2 fps
Number of frames	until card is full	5
Buffer full rate	-	0.8 fps *
Next burst	4.2	4.2

* After the buffer has run full you don't get a consistent number of frames per second but a 'fairly random sequence' of shots. The number stated in the table is the average fps for this sequence.

Burst of RAW images - Continuous Hi

Timing	2 GB SanDisk Extreme III SD	2 GB Lexar Pro 133x SD
Frame rate (average)	2.7 fps	2.6 fps
Number of frames	4	4
Buffer full rate	0.7 fps *	0.7 fps *
Next burst	4.6	4.6

* After the buffer has run full you don't get a consistent number of frames per second but a 'fairly random sequence' of shots. The number stated in the table is the average fps for this sequence.

Burst of RAW images - Continuous Lo

Timing	2 GB SanDisk Extreme III SD	2 GB Lexar Pro 133x SD
Frame rate (average)	1.2 fps	1.2 fps
Number of frames	5	5
Buffer full rate	0.7 fps *	0.7 fps *
Next burst	4.2	4.2

* After the buffer has run full you don't get a consistent number of frames per second but a 'fairly random sequence' of shots. The number stated in the table is the average fps for this sequence.

Continuous shooting is not one of the K200D's strengths. In Hi-Speed mode you can shoot 2.7 fps but only for 4 frames in RAW and, depending on what card you use, 5 or 6 fps when shooting JPEG. Looking at some of the K200D's direct competitors this is not exactly class-leading. If you do a lot of continuous shooting you should keep this in mind.

File Flush Timing

Timings shown below are the time taken for the camera to process and "flush" the image out to the storage card. Timing was taken from the instant the shutter release was pressed to the time the storage card activity indicator went out. The activity indicator light comes on around 0.7 seconds after shutter release, hinting at the time taken to process an image. Writing continues 'in the background' and doesn't affect any camera function. Media used were the same as above.

Image type	Time, secs (2 GB SanDisk)	Time, secs (2 GB Lexar)	Approx. size
3872 x 2592 RAW	2.7	2.8	11,000 KB
3872 x 2592 JPEG ***	2.2	2.2	4,100 KB
3872 x 2592 JPEG **	2.1	2.1	2,100 KB

*1	The K200D begins writing approximately 0.7 seconds after the shutter release is pressed so you must subtract this 'processing time' from the timings above to get the actual write time.

This is another area in which the K200D has improved significantly over its predecessor and the Pentax now writes almost four megabytes per second for a RAW image. This is a pretty good rate and should ensure that writing times never make you miss a shot. Having said that even during RAW writes you can continue to use the camera and take another shot.

USB transfer speed

The K200D only offers the Mass Storage protocol for image transfer to your PC or Mac (most people won't really miss PTP) and performs quite impressively at almost 8 MP/sec transfer speed. However, if you compare that to the results you get from a card reader it still seems like a good idea to invest in one of the latter.

Method	Transfer rate
Pentax K200D (Mass storage device)	7.9 MB/sec
Panasonic CardBus PCMCIA adapter	10.7 MB/sec
SanDisk Extreme in USB 2.0 reader	20.2 MB/sec
Sandisk Extreme Ducati Edition built in USB	18.0 MB/Sec

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