DP2x speed: perception and reality

In several threads one of the major weaknesses of the DP series and the SD1 has been identified as the slowness of operation, especially the times it takes to write to the memory card and the fastest shot to shot times achievable.

For those who are interested in the new DP1M / DP2M or the new (old) SD1M, it might be intersting to know what the actual times are for the DP2x, which I happen to have and enjoy very much.

I bought a new SanDisk Extreme Pro SD card today, which has a max 45 MB / s transfer rate (write and read).

Shooting in RAW and taking three RAWs in quick succession (by using autobracketing), I get on average 9 to 10 seconds after which all three RAWS have been written to the card and the (card write) LED has stopped blinking.

More importantly: if I switch back to single shot mode (still RAW) I can shoot continuously, with minimum times between shots of a couple of seconds or so. I stopped after 20 shots, but I could have gone on at these rates, I'd say.

This includes re-focusing and choosing a slightly different angle between successive shots - which would be a realistic scenario, I'd say.

If you need to change settings between shots, like exposure or ISO, then you would need at least a couple of seconds to do so, and then re-focus, so that in such cases fastest realistic shot to shot times would be a few seconds instead of a couple.

What this means (to me): continues RAW shooting with the DP2x, where by continues I mean a couple of seconds or so between shots, is perfectly possible and not in any way hampered by the actaul times it takes to complete the writing to the SD card.

Unless you require minium shot to shot times of under 2 seconds (which I, for instance, so far have never required), I would not characterize the DP2x as slow.

By the way: a DP2x RAW is 15 MB, the Merrill Raws will be max 45 MB.