Luminous Landscape Forum
Equipment & Techniques => Computers & Peripherals => Topic started by: Yoram from Berlin on November 27, 2011, 02:08:41 pm
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I shoot pretty nice cameras (Canon 1Ds Mk III, 5D Mk II) and the cards always seem so unresponsive. It was suggested to me to switch to Sandisk Extreme Pro 32 Gb (90 MB/s UDMA 6) but they are not tht much faster.
I shoot fashion and models, and often I want to fire off five, six, seven or more frames, and the camera just chokes up. I now tried to shoot into Lightroom 3 tethered, but it is just as slow.
Help, what to do?
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Just in terms of card write speed, Rob Galbraith has a useful database that is camera/card specific here:
http://www.robgalbraith.com/bins/multi_page.asp?cid=6007
John
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It sounds like you're shooting RAW here. The 1Ds Mk III buffer should be enough for 12 RAW images; is your camera becoming unresponsive after the first 5-7 frames or is it after the buffer is full? Given the size of the images coming from your cameras, I would expect the speed at which you can shoot, once your buffer is full, to drop to about 1 or 2 fps (the 1Ds Mk III writes up to 45 MB/s). It sounds like you're pushing the maximum write-performance of the camera. There are a few solutions, but they're probably not that palatable for your work:
* Slow your shooting rate,
* Get a camera with a larger buffer (the D3X apparently has a RAW buffer large enough for 20+ images),
* Lower the capture quality (Not sure what the Canon side of things can do, but, for example, reducing resolution, compression, file format, or image aspect ratio, or number of bits in A/D conversion)
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Eeek, no, those are all difficult to swallow for me. I guess the only one is to slow down my shooting rate... I checked Galbraith when I decided to purchase my cards, they were considered the fastest.
Sigh.
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Check the long-exposure NR.
I was shooting aerials one time with it turned on and the camera bricked at the wrong time. Lesson learned.
As I recall on the Canon, the long-exposure NR engages automatically at a certain time as needed to keep the noise down but I can't remember if it also cuts the buffer down like on Nikon.
On the Nikon, NR cuts the buffer to about 50% its normal size. When shooting raw, the camera will almost brick when the buffer fills and keeps the frame rate as slow as a slug until it clears.
You could also set you maximum frame rate down a frame or two to give your buffer a chance a better chance to keep up.
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I am also going to guess that you have the in camera noise reduction activated. Disabling this may buy you a boost in frames before the buffer fills up.
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Thank you Larry (and Brian)... that fixed it!
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Glad I knew something that worked and you're back to speed!
Right now, B&H has 16GB Lexar and Sandisk cards, 400x, for less than $50. 600x are just a little more. It may help a little during shooting, but the big advantage of speedy cards is when you've got to download them all!
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http://hoodmanusa.com/ (http://hoodmanusa.com/)