"Busy"?

[Randi]

Let me start off by saying I am a total ignoramus when it comes to finding my way around a camera. I enjoy taking pictures but I am by no means a photographer, not by any stretch of the imagination. I am here because I don't understand the message which displays on my LCD screen on my camera. After I take a succession of 5-6 shots quickly in a row, my camera stops and displays, "BUSY" and has a lightening bolt symbol. I thought this meant the flash was recharging. I asked a friend of mine who told me that I needed a better memory card. So I got a high performance memory card, thinking this would solve the issue, but it hasn't. I'm not sure what this message means and when I'm trying to take shots quickly, it is frustrating to be slowed down waiting for the busy message to disappear. Can anyone tell me what this means, and if there is something I can do to fix it, or if this is normal?

 

[Whinnie]

I might be wrong, but someone told me that you can take a certain amount of pictures, then it has to add them to the memory card. I usually only take 2-3 pictures so I havent got this message yet

 

[Josh66]

First, what camera do you have?

Sounds like the buffer is full...

Does it only happen when you're shooting on burst mode?


More details are needed to give any help more than a guess...

 

[bigtwinky]

Lens -> sensor -> procesor -> buffer -> memory card

Your picture gets processed, sits in the buffer and is written to the memory card.
Busy means that either the buffer is full and you need to wait for things to be written to the memory card.

What affects this? The size and speed of the buffer, which is dependant on your camera. Also, the speed of the memory card also has an impact. The size of the file\photo being written will also impact...ie a RAW will take more time to write than a low res JPG