What do I need to change

[joeamy05]

So, I am out taking family portraits and I am missing great shots because my camera is getting bogged down and says busy.....annoying.

I am shooting with a Canon Rebel xsi, in RAW...my memory card is an 8gb sdhc. what do I need to do to have less "busy" time..I am thinking it's the card loading...are their differences in brand, what do you recommend?

 

[fokker]

Cards have different speed ratings, check what yours is. I think you want around 120x speed.
I think also the rebel series are a bit slow at writing to cards. I noticed a big difference between a 400d and a 40d.

 

[reznap]

I think shooting in Jpeg can speed things up but don't just take my word for it cause I'm not sure. If not using RAW is an option anyway..

 

[pbelarge]

Depending on the camera and how fast you are trying to capture between each shot, a different card may not make much of a difference.

The buffer of your camera is only so large, if anything you may need a faster camera.

How fast and how many shots are you trying to capture.

One other suggestion. (raw shooters, don't get mad )
Take your camera out of raw and shoot in jpeg. This may help.

 

[Derrel]

The Rob Galbraith CF/SD Card Database is kind of a semi-official clearinghouse of CF and SD Card write and read performance figures for many specific cameras. Your camera is not on the list, but many,many different memory cards of various brands are listed, with excellent and reliable read and write and transfer time information,all for free. Here is the URL: Rob Galbraith DPI: CF/SD Performance Database

With many cameras, if in-camera Noise Reduction is enabled, it can slow down the writing speed to the storage card, especially in dark conditions, such as at night time, where various NR schemes like dark frame subtraction can take as long as the exposure time to run the NR!!! One night, shooting fireworks with 20 second exposures, it took 40 seconds to make and write each frame: 20 for the exposure, and 20 for the dark frame subtraction process to map out the noise. Ack!!!

So, check and see if you have in-camera Noise Reduction on--that could easily be slowing down the write-to-card speeds. Also, some cheaper cards are just quite simply VERY,very slow and when a longer burst of shots (say 5 to 15 shots) is captured, it can take foreeeeeeever to write the images to a cheap or low-tech card.

 

[LaFoto]

My 350D has never given me any trouble taking many photos rapidly one after the other, unless I mean to use flash. THAT takes time in loading. But usually (unless I take 30 second exposures at night - those DO take time in being written to the card, no matter what format I use, RAW or .jpeg!) the photo gets written to the card instantly.

 

[pbelarge]

One night, shooting fireworks with 20 second exposures, it took 40 seconds to make and write each frame: 20 for the exposure, and 20 for the dark frame subtraction process to map out the noise. Ack!!!

Maybe if you put earmuffs on the camera during the fireworks, it will reduce the noise....you know I am just a beginner.:mrgreen:

 

[fokker]

The Rob Galbraith CF/SD Card Database is kind of a semi-official clearinghouse of CF and SD Card write and read performance figures for many specific cameras. Your camera is not on the list, but many,many different memory cards of various brands are listed, with excellent and reliable read and write and transfer time information,all for free. Here is the URL: Rob Galbraith DPI: CF/SD Performance Database

With many cameras, if in-camera Noise Reduction is enabled, it can slow down the writing speed to the storage card, especially in dark conditions, such as at night time, where various NR schemes like dark frame subtraction can take as long as the exposure time to run the NR!!! One night, shooting fireworks with 20 second exposures, it took 40 seconds to make and write each frame: 20 for the exposure, and 20 for the dark frame subtraction process to map out the noise. Ack!!!

So, check and see if you have in-camera Noise Reduction on--that could easily be slowing down the write-to-card speeds. Also, some cheaper cards are just quite simply VERY,very slow and when a longer burst of shots (say 5 to 15 shots) is captured, it can take foreeeeeeever to write the images to a cheap or low-tech card.

My apologies for going slightly off-topic here, but derrel do you know if in-camera noise reduction is only applied to jpegs, or does it apply to RAW files as well?

 

[mdtusz]

I always shoot RAW and after long exposure shots, the lcd shows "NR JOB" for a few seconds which leads me to believe it applies noise reduction to RAW files too. That is, on a d90 at least.

 

[fokker]

But do you shoot RAW+JPG or just RAW?

 

[Derrel]

fokker,
Noise reduction is usually a user-selectable On-Off or Off-Low-Normal-High type of option, depending on the individual camera. There seems to be some very low-level noise reduction done on some cameras' raw files, from what I have read. The Sony A900 for example apparently has some kind of noise reduction performed on its raw files,and it is not user-changeable. Also, some people say that some Nikon bodies are doing some low-level noise reduction on raw captures. Typically this type of low-level optimizing of the raw captures is not what people are talking about when they say "noise reduction", but some people get pretty bent out of shape about a camera model that has its raw data tweaked in any way,shape,or form--but I think that's usually not much to worry about, but is instead just the manufacturer slightly tweaking the data as it sees fit to do to create what *they* consider the best raw file possible, depending on how the data looks, the WB, the exposure level, and so on.

Normally, there's a setting for Long Exposure Noise Reduction or NR or Noise Reduction someplace in the shooting or setup bank menu(s)--again, depends on the camera. If you shoot a Nikon with noise reduction enabled and shoot RAW+JPEG, you will get noise-reduced JPEGs right off of the card, and the RAW .NEF files will have the NR settings you selected in-camera applied by Nikon raw converter software by default, and other raw converters will either read that...or not...

Most people decide to either turn noise reduction OFF, or set it to AUTO, or set it as they feel appropriate. Again, it depends on your camera maker and model what the options are. And on the conditions...Nikon's in-camera NR on JPEGs is pretty decent, even on HIGH. Shooting RAW+ JPEG I sometimes shoot the D2x with NR on HIGH at elevated ISO's like 400,500,640,800.

 

[JasonLambert]

OP, With my XSI I saw a large difference tonight while out shooting. I normally have a Optima 4gb card in but I had it full so I used the card from my cell phone. It was the first time I ever had lag. Funny how I was just thinking about this when I saw your topic.