write speed on my K7

Hi i'm new to the forum and im looking for some advice, I have at the moment a K7 and my other half has got the K30, I'm looking to upgrade because of the write speed on my K7 seems slow, if i take for instance a 30sec exposure it takes about the same time (30sec's) to write to the card and i cant take another snap until it's finished doing it's stuff,as you can imagine this is frustrating when i am taking even longer exposures, i'm using a 16g 30mbs per sec card,is it my card that needs upgrading or is it the camera prossesing that is slow, are the new K511s or K3 better or are they the same. Thanks in advance to tho's who can help. cheers Bonesy.

For long exposure shots the K7 takes a second (blank) exposure of identical length which it then uses to subtract noise from the first exposure. This is 'Slow Shutter Speed NR'. I'm not sure if the K7 allows this to be switched off.

I know the K5II/K5IIs (and I think the new K3) do allow for this to be switched off. Not sure about other models.

Hi Bonesy.

It'll take the K7 the same time to write a 30s exposure to the card as any other speed exposure i.e. 1/6 second or so - that isn't your problem.

I suspect you have your K7 set so that for very long exposures the camera does a second (in this case 30s) exposure so that it can detect and cancel out hot pixels which otherwise can become prominent on long exposures. This second exposure option can be turned off in the camera menus if you want.

I have a K5 rather than K7, but I think you have discovered dark frame subtraction. With long exposures the camera makes a second exposure in the dark and uses the noise pattern on that to subtract similar noise from the final image. Exposures take twice as long while the camera goes through this process. So, nothing to do with your card (though 30mbs can no longer be considered fast, it's certainly adequate for single-frame shooting).

Now, that's PU service: three responses (for once, agreeing with one another) within 30 minutes of posting.

Thanks guy's i've found it in the menu's and switched it off all i need to do is try it now, Quick on on same subject to save trying it later on tonight, will switching it off affect my images much of is it worth putting up with the second image when writing to get a different or better quality image ? by the way i am impressed with this forum i've been looking at a few posts and learned a couple of other things to so thanks again.

that's a question only you can answer by comparing the images you've taken and what you want to achieve

Hello and welcome

My money is on the slow shutter speed noise reduction

Its certainly a better way to remove noise than plain old DeNoise software (and all the blurring that goes with that).

Yet another superb technical feature on our amazing K7!

Spot on answer I think. There isn't going to be a definitive answer to which is better for all pictures, but I suggest that if you are taking long exposure tripod shots, and can tolerate the increased time for two exposures, this feature is overall more likely to help than not.

...and welcome to the Forum

Hello and Welcome to the Forum. Enjoy the K7 great camera.