Is it my camera or is it the card

I Ball Paul

I Ball Paul

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Paul
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Can someone please help me :wave:

I use a Canon 350d and generally have a Sandisk IV 4GB CF card inside and always shoot in RAW.

When I shoot continuous it takes what seems an age to write the images and I generally end up missing some of the action :bang: before I can start shooting again.

Is it my camera or my CF card:shrug:

Thanks for reading!
 
Have you formatted the card in the camera as this can improve the response time ?

Also try borrowing another card to see if the result is the same.
 
I format the card every time but it might be worth as you say to borrow another one just to see - Cheers
 
what do you mean by continuous?

A camera can be quick and shoot continuously until its buffer fills up and then it has to pause until it has written the files to the card and cleared the buffer

RAW files are big so fill the buffer quicker, and also take longer to write to the card
 
keirik said:
what do you mean by continuous?

A camera can be quick and shoot continuously until its buffer fills up and then it has to pause until it has written the files to the card and cleared the buffer

RAW files are big so fill the buffer quicker, and also take longer to write to the card
Click to expand...

Continuous = one shot after another in quick succsession

So do newer cameras have a bigger buffer - I feel a hit in the wallet coming on:(
 
A Sandisk IV 4GB CF card should be quick - I guess it might be the camera. If speed and continuous shooting are essential I would consider switching back to JPG just to capture whatever it is you are taking pictures of, then go back to RAW. That would be cheaper than upgrading the camera :)
 
There is no need to use Extreme IV's on the 350D or lower cameras as the limiting speed is the write speed of the camera. You should notice faster downloads when using a card reader.

If card was bought on Ebay etc it could be a slow card badged as a fast card - thousands of fakes out there.
 
I Ball Paul said:
Continuous = one shot after another in quick succsession

So do newer cameras have a bigger buffer - I feel a hit in the wallet coming on:(
Click to expand...

Yes, generally the more expensive the camera, the bigger the buffer - the tech specs for each camera should tell you how many shots the buffer will hold.

For example :

450D : 6 raw images
5DMkii : 13 raw images
1DMKiv : 30 raw images !

Buying a faster card will give you a marginal increase in speed, but if you want to blaze away you need a better camera.
 
andrewc said:
There is no need to use Extreme IV's on the 350D or lower cameras as the limiting speed is the write speed of the camera. You should notice faster downloads when using a card reader.

If card was bought on Ebay etc it could be a slow card badged as a fast card - thousands of fakes out there.
Click to expand...



I did get it from ebay and it does down load very fast when using a card reader
 
The 4Gb Extreme IV is a pretty quick card - I've only just upgraded to newer 16Gb cards myself, but I used these for the past 2 years with D2x and D3 bodies with no write-speed problems at all - always shooting RAW...
I'd say it was the camera's buffer being too small to accommodate as many images as you'd like when bursts are being taken...
 
Listen to Duncan, he knows what he's talking about

why do continuous shooting with RAW anyway? If the continuouse part is that important, I'd kill the RAW and shoot JPEG (as Nico says), and if you are worried about the exposure do some bracketing
 
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