Is It Normal

[Al-Wazeer]

hello
when i take - with my Nikon D40 - shots with slow shutter speeds my camera takes a loong time at saving the picture.

i used a canon 350d and took shots with slow shutter speeds and it saved it just in one sec maybe!

is there a problem with my d40 or maybe my card is bad quality so it needs a lot of time to save a long exposed picture, or that's normal for my camera?? ( i use an SD lexar 2GB memo )

 

[Slaphead]

Just a guess, but I think you've got the "Long Exposure Noise Reduction" turned on. If memory serves correctly this mode can seriously slow down writing to the card while the camera processes the noise.

 

[Captain IK]

Slaphead is likely correct.

 

[Al-Wazeer]

yes i do turn on the noise reduction ...
so that's it? no problem with camera ??
or should i check to close the noise reduction, and take a long exposed picture?

because in short exposed pic it saves it realy quick no problem! even with the noise reduction on

 

[Slaphead]

Ok, just checked the D40 manual and the answer is yes, turn off noise reduction when doing a long exposure (1 second or longer) and the write speed will go back to normal, but the resulting images may be noisier than you'd like.

 

[andrew99]

When you have the long exposure noise reduction turned on, the camera takes 2 exposures. First the real exposure, then it takes another one with the shutter closed but for the same duration. The second exposure is just so the camera has a reference point of which pixels are causing noise, and then subtracts that from the original image. You can test this -- if you take a long exposure, the camera will be frozen for exactly the same amount of time while it does the reference exposure.

Personally I turned off that feature when I was using a D40, it used to drive me nuts.