Discussion Forum Leica S System Workflow and Processing Parallel storage to memory chips question.
  • June 27, 2011 at 10:06 pm #477
    Jack MacD

    David,
    Love the new forum. Thank you for starting it. I like your sections for S questions. You don’t have a section yet called ” dumb questions that can probably be answered by reading the S2 manual or watching Dale videos. If you did, I would post this question to that section now.

    When I first obtained my S2 from you, I also bought 64gig CF cards. Given the files were not yet compressed, a 64 gig card was handy. I used the SD card slot as a back up once, but found parallel processing slowed the writing time. So I set it for sequential storage using the SD as an overflow back up.

    Now with compressed files my 16 Gig SD is sometimes my preferred storage card if I am using a laptop in the field that has a SD slot but no FireWire for My CF reader.

    The question is: is there a way to have the SD card written to first rather than the CF?

    Incidentally, when I chose Parallel writing to cards, I no longer can even get both written to, even though it will write to the SD card if the CF card is not inserted. Not sure what I am doing wrong there. That’s the dumb question.

    Jack
  • June 27, 2011 at 11:20 pm #478
    Mark Gowin

    Jack,

    As I recall, the S2 has never performed parallel writes of the DNG to both CF card and SD card. I was shocked to discover that parallel write really meant it writes the DNG to the CF card and JPG to the SD card when you have the S2 set to DNG+JPG. If you have the S2 set to DNG only, then it doesn’t write anything to the SD card until the CF card is full. If you want to write to the SD card first, then the only option is to leave the CF card out of the camera. I don’t understand why Leica has not allowed true parallel writes of the DNG file. I understand that it could slow down the camera, but it would be nice to have the option so I can choose for myself whether I want a fast camera with no backup or a slow camera with a backup.

    David, Josh, or others please correct me if I am wrong.

    Mark

  • June 28, 2011 at 3:16 am #479
    David Farkas

    Mark Gowin;160 wrote: Jack,

    As I recall, the S2 has never performed parallel writes of the DNG to both CF card and SD card. I was shocked to discover that parallel write really meant it writes the DNG to the CF card and JPG to the SD card when you have the S2 set to DNG+JPG. If you have the S2 set to DNG only, then it doesn’t write anything to the SD card until the CF card is full. If you want to write to the SD card first, then the only option is to leave the CF card out of the camera. I don’t understand why Leica has not allowed true parallel writes of the DNG file. I understand that it could slow down the camera, but it would be nice to have the option so I can choose for myself whether I want a fast camera with no backup or a slow camera with a backup.

    David, Josh, or others please correct me if I am wrong.

    Mark

    Mark,

    Your explanation is exactly right. No correction necessary.

    I hope that Leica chooses to change the parallel option in firmware so that a DNG file can be written to both cards.

    David

    David Farkas
    Red Dot Forum
    Leica Store Miami
  • June 28, 2011 at 6:13 pm #483
    Jack MacDonough

    Thanks folks,
    Now I remember the parallel was with jpegs.
    Someday a firmware update will do what makes sense.
    Meantime, nice quick answer.

  • June 26, 2013 at 3:48 pm #3977
    peterv

    What a wonderful forum this is! I had the same issue, while using parallel on my S2 shooting DNG only, the SD card stayed empty …
    A Google search pointed me to this thread, problem solved. That is to say I’m glad I found out it’s not my S2 or me doing something wrong, but I find the DNG to CF and JPG to SD a bit odd. Calling this ‘parallel’ writing is rather confusing.

    Any news wether this will be fixed in future firmware? I guess not since this thread was started two years ago.

    Anyway, thanks!

  • June 26, 2013 at 5:01 pm #3978
    David Farkas

    peterv;4670 wrote: What a wonderful forum this is! I had the same issue, while using parallel on my S2 shooting DNG only, the SD card stayed empty …
    A Google search pointed me to this thread, problem solved. That is to say I’m glad I found out it’s not my S2 or me doing something wrong, but I find the DNG to CF and JPG to SD a bit odd. Calling this ‘parallel’ writing is rather confusing.

    Any news wether this will be fixed in future firmware? I guess not since this thread was started two years ago.

    Anyway, thanks!

    Peter,

    Unfortunately, it doesn’t seem that this will ever be changed due to a technical limitation on the S2. You can read the exact reason if you scroll about halfway down in this Q&A I did with the S Product Mangers:

    Photo Plus Expo 2011: A Discussion with Leica S2 Product Managers Stephan Schulz and Toni Felsner

    David Farkas
    Red Dot Forum
    Leica Store Miami
  • June 26, 2013 at 6:40 pm #3979
    peterv

    Thank you for pointing me to your article, David. I remember reading it at the time, but had completely forgotten about the ‘parallel’ writing.

    Anyway, I have a 32 Gb SD card which I will use in the S2 without the CF in the camera. This will make downloading the files on my MBP easier, since I won’t need an extra card reader for the SD.

    Thanks again,

    Peter

  • June 27, 2013 at 2:21 pm #3982
    David Farkas

    peterv;4672 wrote: Thank you for pointing me to your article, David. I remember reading it at the time, but had completely forgotten about the ‘parallel’ writing.

    Anyway, I have a 32 Gb SD card which I will use in the S2 without the CF in the camera. This will make downloading the files on my MBP easier, since I won’t need an extra card reader for the SD.

    Thanks again,

    Peter

    Peter,

    Obviously, using the built-in SD reader in the MBP will make downloading on the go simpler, but…. it will be a lot slower. The built-in reader is a USB 2.0 device, topping out at around 20 BM/s. If you use a USB 3.0 reader (I like the Lexar CF/SD combo reader), you can get up to 90 MB/s on a 600x (or faster) CF card.

    Real world difference downloading 32GB of data:

    20 MB/s – 27 minutes
    90 MB/s – 6 minutes

    For me, carrying a small external reader and USB 3.0 cord is totally worth it. It’s nice to have the backup of a built-in SD reader in case the external gets lost or stops working.

    David Farkas
    Red Dot Forum
    Leica Store Miami
  • June 27, 2013 at 11:29 pm #3983
    Jack MacD

    Peter,
    David explained this to me a few years ago regarding download speed. And I thank him.
    It is an amazing difference! There is a reason CF still exists for pro cameras.

    I probably didn’t care years ago when I was shooting small files.

    Jack
  • June 28, 2013 at 10:58 am #3984
    peterv

    Jack and David,

    thanks, that’s good advice, the difference in download-time is certainly worth carrying the CF reader.

    As a side note, the S2 seems to prefer the CF card. When I first got the S2, I tried to update the firmware with an SD card, but couldn’t get it to work. With a CF the camera recognized the firmware and did the update very quickly without any problems.

    Cheers,

    Peter

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