X100 slow with bigger cards?

Rogier

Rogier

Rogier Willems
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Jul 7, 2008
Messages
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Hi,

I am preparing my X100 for a trip to Vietnam and realized what a horrible experience I had on our last vacation. It took for ever for the camera to wake up from start or sleep :bang:
Also taking a shot took forever :mad:

  • The firmware is 2.01
  • I always reformat the cards in the camera
  • Only shoot RAW
  • Fast startup is enabled
  • Cards used Sandisk Extreme 16GB (45MB sec)

Strangely enough the smaller cards with (Sandisk Ultra II 4GB 15MB sec) were working just fine. But when I switch to the larger cards the camera soon came to a crawl. Not at first instance but after an xxx number of shots.

I have been searching this forum where I found an other old tread where someone had a similar experience. No one came up with a solution in that over 2 year old tread.

A google search brings up the same "solutions" as the steps listed above. Unfortunately this does NOT resolve the issue for my camera.

I vaguely recall that the X100 (1st gen) had a problem with larger cards. Does anyone here know more about this?

Thanks,

Rogier
 
I just tried it on my x100 (first batch out) using fw 2.00. I use the same setup. From power up to ready to shoot, I did not see any problems, but I did c an idiosyncratcy.. First the cards I tried were from no name 4gb sd to Sandisk extreme 8gb sdhc to 16 and 32 sdhc HD, Sony 64g sdxc card. Basic startup was about the same.

On the 8gb and 16gb cards, I noticed a slightly longer time to get to ready to shoot. But when I turned it off and back on, the difference in lag disappeared. Makes me wonder hat it was doing the first time.

I never upgraded to fw 2.01 since it had nothing I really needed.

In terms of sleep to power up, I found in the past that wake up response was inconsistent. Just stopped using it. I just turn off the camera out of habit if I don't use it again immediately.

Have u tried other large size so cards yet?

Gary
 
Thanks for your reply Garry,

The problem occurs once you have used the newly formatted card a while.
Don't recall the number of images taken, it all works fine in the beginning but after a while the camera almost becomes useless.

Rogier
 
Sounds like something similar to what happened in the old days of DOS PCs where the fat table entries needed to be unscrambled (too long ago forgot the term). Or it could be some bad sectors on the card.

Have u got a PC or Mac, where u can do diagnostics on the card. In the old days u could do a low level format. Then put it bad in the Fuji and format it to Fuji needs?

Gary
 
Do you delete files individually from the cards or all of them in one hit? I always delete all files and I don't seem to suffer the problem you describe. In either case you may find that the card is fragmented which will impact on performance. It's a PITA but try formatting the card each time you would normally delete files from it.

I was astonished that a friend at the local club keeps his RAW files on the card rather than copy them all to his PC and then delete them all from the card. So he has files on one card spread over many months and deletes various files as and when. I would say that's a very bad thing to do and offers no benefits at all
 
yep need to reformat the sd card every time u have transferred images to your computer..especially if u are a Mac user. Widows user do not seem to be affected. The Fuji file system sd card driver seems to not like Unix hidden files on the so card. Other camera maker's cameras do not seem to be affected. When u erase files using the Mac OS, it puts hidden system file info on the card. Inititally, there are no noticeable affects. Over time the camera seems to just bog down reading the sd card. The work around has always been to format the card when u put it back into the camera.

Gary
 
It is possible the X100 can not efficiently handle large capacity cards.

Since you always reformat the card in-camera, the problem must be related to an inadequacy in the X100 firmware or CPU architecture design. Even if OS X has written invisible files to the card, an in-camera format eliminates the issue Gary described.

There is one newer firmware version. However Fujifilm states this update:
"The firmware update Ver.2.10 from ver.2.01 incorporates the following issue:
1.Addition of the function for TELE CONVERSION LENS TCL-X100
1.Change of shooting menu
Current : WIDE CONVERSION LENS > ON / OFF
New : CONVERSION LENS >WIDE / TELE / OFF
2.When "TELE" is selected in the "CONVERSION LENS" menu, the size of the Bright frame in the Optical Viewfinder will switch to shooting area for the TELE CONVERSION LENS.
<NOTE>
With this upgrade of X100, settings including date will return to default."

So, I am not implying updating the firmware has an undocumented patch that will resolve your issue.
 
I don't have a Fuji but my M8 has problems as well on certain cards,
I guess you have to try the card that work best with your camera and
call Fuji to see what they recommend.

Range
 
I checked the Fuji website and they don't give any particular limitation other that than the r/w speed should be at least a Class 4.
And the firmware I am running is 2.01
 
Thanks to the statistics of bug reports, mature cards will have had their firmware tuned to give best results with the write patterns of the cameras common within the year after their release (past that, power users and OEM customers will have moved on to the next generation and stop complaining). The technology behind 45MB/s 16GB cards will date back to at least five years ago, when these got popular - so YMMV with more recent (or generally rare) cameras.
 
sevo said:
Thanks to the statistics of bug reports, mature cards will have had their firmware tuned to give best results with the write patterns of the cameras common within the year after their release (past that, power users and OEM customers will have moved on to the next generation and stop complaining). The technology behind 45MB/s 16GB cards will date back to at least five years ago, when these got popular - so YMMV with more recent (or generally rare) cameras.
Click to expand...

So you are suggesting my Memory cards are outdated?
They work fine in all my other camera's.

Or are you suggesting I should ditch the X100 and move on?
 
You might want to try more recently popular card sizes and speeds, maybe 32GB, SDXC or U3. As I said 16GB U1 cards probably were developed too early to get a bug report from a X100 user while the card firmware was still in active development.
 
Rogier said:
So you are suggesting my Memory cards are outdated?
They work fine in all my other camera's.

Or are you suggesting I should ditch the X100 and move on?
Click to expand...

No... just use more (smaller capacity) cards that are reliable for your camera. There are inexpensive solutions to organize multiple cards.
 
I was getting write error messages with a couple of my larger cards with 2.01 Updated to 2.1 and now it all seems to be working fine.I even picked up a Toshiba aircard3 in the larger 32 gb size.... working well so far. The camera is an original Black x100. Try the FW update. :)
 
Oh wait now I see, there is a 2.1 and was reading that 2.01 was the latest one....
Getting more dyslectic by the week :-(
 
Rogier
I'm with you man :p

BTW
I just got this camera last friday.
The problem and seemingly solution all occurred over the last couple days.
Updating FW is easy.
Just google fuji x100 firmware 2.1 and you should find the fuji downlaod page.
Cheers!
 
I have worked for 4 companies as a fw engineer (never one in the camera industry). Usually internally found bug fixes are never reported in the release notes, only the ones that customers have discovered... Product line managers tend not tell more in the release notes then they have to.

Gary
 
Nonsense. My x100 handles 16 gb cards perfectly well, including the case of selectively deleted images on a Mac. Yes i do empty the bin after deleting.
No issues ever, no slowdown or anything.

You might have a defective card or camera.
 
Pherdinand said:
Nonsense. My x100 handles 16 gb cards perfectly well, including the case of selectively deleted images on a Mac. Yes i do empty the bin after deleting.
No issues ever, no slowdown or anything.

You might have a defective card or camera.
Click to expand...

Well you're lucky or maybe less sensitive to slow cameras.
It's a known and acknowledged issue for fuji cameras.
Artifacts left on cards from Mac OS do slow operation.
I've experienced it with 4 different fuji models.
It's easily overcome with a quick card format in the camera.
Maybe try yourself Pherdinand... Maybe you will see a performance increase you did no know you were missing ;)
 
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