is there anyone with not yet updated GXR A12 FW (pre 1.17)?

[odklizec]

Hi folks,

Is there anyone with not yet updated GXR A12 FW (pre 1.17)?

It seems the latest 1.17 delivered two more (undocumented) surprises. One is quite positive, the other one is somewhat negative (but understandable).

A very positive thing is that GXR A12 RAW continuous mode seems to be nearly as fast as JPEG continuous mode! And both JPEG and RAW continuous modes appear to be noticeable faster too! With FW 1.17 I'm now able to take 4 RAW+FINE JPEGs under 1 sec! Exactly about 0.83 - 0.86 secs. This translates to 4.7-4.8fps! In Fine JPEG mode I'm able to take 4 frames around 0.79secs, which is about 5.1fps! These numbers are much more usable than the originally reported 2.35fps for RAW and 3fps for JPEG. I'm surprised Ricoh did not inform us about such remarkable improvements?

On the negative note, it's no longer possible to downgrade the GXR FW with older one! Before FW 1.17 I was able to downgrade FW 1.07 to 1.06 and return back to 1.07. This is no longer possible with 1.17. I guess this change was done in order to prevent the users to mismatch the firmware versions in body and modules.

And this is why I'm asking if there is someone with not yet updated GXR A12? I would like to confirm my original measurements of A12 continuous speed. Were my original measurements correct and the A12 continuous mode is really that much faster with FW 1.17?

 

[odklizec]

It seems everyone already updated their A12? In a meantime, I did one more interesting discovery!

I'm nearly sure that A12 continuous mode is now really faster, both in RAW+JPEG or pure JPEG. It's very usable now. However, that's not all! It seems that A12 is capable even faster continuous speed! I recently tried AE bracketing and I was surprised to see that A12 in BKT mode takes three consecutive RAW+JPEG photos even faster than if the camera is switched to Continuous mode! In BKT mode it takes around 300 msecs to take 3 consecutive RAW+JPEG shots. Doing the same in Continuous mode, it takes around 430 msecs! The difference may sound minor, but it makes the BKT mode about 3fps faster than the continuous mode!

In other words, continuous mode fires with 6.9fps speed, BKT fires with around 10fps speed! Of course, these numbers are more or less theoretical as the continuous buffer is limited to just 4 frames and BKT to 3 frames. But I repeated the measurements several with great care about pressing the shutter and timer button at the same time. I removed the slowest and fastest times and averaged the rest of measured times. And the results really surprised me. I'm really curious why is the continuous mode about 3fps slower than in BKT? There seems to be some hidden secrets and power reserves in the A12 module?

If you wish to confirm or deny my measurement, try this:
- set the camera to A mode, center exposure, f2.5, ISO400 +0.7EV and 4:3 RAW+Fine JPEG.
- go to http://tools.arantius.com/stopwatch
- focus the camera to the displayed timer and make sure the shutter speed is not much slower than 1/100 (with the above settings you should get something about 1/150-1/200)
- try to take few rounds in continuous mode (always 4 frames then delete the last one). Ideally, the first photo should be taken at 00:00:00.
- repeat the same with BKT mode (BKT set to -0.3, 0 and +0.3EV)

The average time for BKT should be around 0.3secs and 0.43secs for third frame taken in Continuous mode.