DSLRs and SD cards
Discussion
Howdy all.
I've been using my Canon 5D3 for trying to get some photos of small birds (oo er) recently and it's becoming apparent that it won't take that many photos on burst mode before the buffer is full and it takes a while to clear. I'm using a Lexar Professional class 10 SD card, and I thought that that might be the problem, that the card wasn't fast enough.
However, after doing some research it appears that Canon in all their wisdom didn't make the 5D3 compatible with high speed SD cards and apparently I'll get much better results having only a CF card in there.
What do you guys use and why? Should I be using a CF card or will it not make much difference in reality? I thought I'd ask in here as some of you guys have a lot of experience and a decent CF card is no small expenditure for me.
Thanks!
I've been using my Canon 5D3 for trying to get some photos of small birds (oo er) recently and it's becoming apparent that it won't take that many photos on burst mode before the buffer is full and it takes a while to clear. I'm using a Lexar Professional class 10 SD card, and I thought that that might be the problem, that the card wasn't fast enough.
However, after doing some research it appears that Canon in all their wisdom didn't make the 5D3 compatible with high speed SD cards and apparently I'll get much better results having only a CF card in there.
What do you guys use and why? Should I be using a CF card or will it not make much difference in reality? I thought I'd ask in here as some of you guys have a lot of experience and a decent CF card is no small expenditure for me.
Thanks!
leglessAlex said:
Howdy all.
I've been using my Canon 5D3 for trying to get some photos of small birds (oo er) recently and it's becoming apparent that it won't take that many photos on burst mode before the buffer is full and it takes a while to clear. I'm using a Lexar Professional class 10 SD card, and I thought that that might be the problem, that the card wasn't fast enough.
However, after doing some research it appears that Canon in all their wisdom didn't make the 5D3 compatible with high speed SD cards and apparently I'll get much better results having only a CF card in there.
What do you guys use and why? Should I be using a CF card or will it not make much difference in reality? I thought I'd ask in here as some of you guys have a lot of experience and a decent CF card is no small expenditure for me.
Thanks!
I'm not familiar with the 5D3 but I have experience with some of the 1080p video dash cameras which positively eat memory, recording in excess of 500MB is quite common for 3 minutes of video, and some of these dash cams actually prefer slower memory cards such as class 4 and class 6 rather than class 10, so perhaps it might be worthwhile trying a slower SD card to see if it improves the performance of your camera.I've been using my Canon 5D3 for trying to get some photos of small birds (oo er) recently and it's becoming apparent that it won't take that many photos on burst mode before the buffer is full and it takes a while to clear. I'm using a Lexar Professional class 10 SD card, and I thought that that might be the problem, that the card wasn't fast enough.
However, after doing some research it appears that Canon in all their wisdom didn't make the 5D3 compatible with high speed SD cards and apparently I'll get much better results having only a CF card in there.
What do you guys use and why? Should I be using a CF card or will it not make much difference in reality? I thought I'd ask in here as some of you guys have a lot of experience and a decent CF card is no small expenditure for me.
Thanks!
Can't answer for Canon but testing in Nikon D3, 3X, 700, 800 I found the limiting factor wasn't card speed but camera write speeds, I assume therefore the buffer capacity. And only then if doing rapid fire which I rarely do! I found the speed plateaued at 40MBs cards. Using faster made no difference. I think the faster cards are only exploited whilst downloading to a computer and only then if the computer can operate faster. In any case that is of no real advantage. I rarely shoot more than 300 raw files in a shoot so I put the card in the reader and pack the gear away or have a coffee! In summary, don't waste your money on fast cards!
leglessAlex said:
Nope, but it would be useful and it annoys me to think that a very expensive camera is being throttled by the SD card.
I had the same issue recently with a Canon 5D3 (just acquired), and the first camera I've had with SD and CF option.Was on a photography day shooting cats with a photographer/advisor.
Shooting with SD card in burst mode, after 8 or 9 shots, it stopped shooting and I had to wait several seconds for the buffer to slowly clear.
I even had some issues shooting fairly quickly repeatedly in single shot mode. It was really annoying.
For reference, I was shooting RAW and high quality jpeg both saved to the same destination.
I mentioned this to the photographer and he also said that he doesn't bother with SD cards usually - prefers CF as more performant.
I switched to an old CF card, and it behaved fine. Have since got some new CF cards and very happy with the performance.
I guess it would probably improve performance saving RAW to CF and jpeg to SD?
I did try some video to the SD card and this seemed fine.
It is true CF are faster than SD and writing RAW to CF and JPEG to SD will make the best of the camera write speed but it is the camera thats the limiting factor. Buying faster cards is false economy. All the current Sandisk cards are quicker than the camera buffers. The only way to get sustained sequential shots is to reduce the quality of the file being written to the card. IIRC the L,M,H JPEG options don't make much difference but the Fine, Normal, Basic does. By selecting the right combination I can get my D3 to run flat-out up to 11fps (autofocus can slow this down) until it hits the shot limit I've set (currently 100). Shot quite a few dog sequences like that. Ive never needed to shoot pets RAW except in a studio.
ian in lancs said:
It is true CF are faster than SD and writing RAW to CF and JPEG to SD will make the best of the camera write speed but it is the camera thats the limiting factor. Buying faster cards is false economy. All the current Sandisk cards are quicker than the camera buffers. The only way to get sustained sequential shots is to reduce the quality of the file being written to the card. IIRC the L,M,H JPEG options don't make much difference but the Fine, Normal, Basic does. By selecting the right combination I can get my D3 to run flat-out up to 11fps (autofocus can slow this down) until it hits the shot limit I've set (currently 100). Shot quite a few dog sequences like that. Ive never needed to shoot pets RAW except in a studio.
This is what I've been wondering, are the camera processors capable of handling data faster than the 20MB/s that the SD card limits them to? The internet tells me yes they are, but I wanted to get an idea of what people here use in the 'real world' so to speak.
Thanks for all the info gents.
Gassing Station | Photography & Video | Top of Page | What's New | My Stuff