A quick question about the continuous shooting mode on my D5000

TNVO · Apr 2, 2011

Whenever I select continuous shooting on my camera, it only takes 4 pictures at a time, before a short pause, then another picture is taken.

How do I fix this? If I'm taking pictures of games, I expect to be taking more than 4 pictures at a time.

( I bought this camera off of my friend, so he might have tweaked the settings a bit. )

thanks!

480sparky · Apr 2, 2011

Maybe you fill up the internal buffer, and it needs to write the data to the memory card before it releases the shutter button.

Stryker · Apr 2, 2011

Pretty good question. This also happens to me when shooting bursts. Does it have something to do with the speed of the memory card? I use Sandisk 30mbps. Is there a need to upgrade to a 60mbps card?

TNVO · Apr 2, 2011

Stryker said:
Pretty good question. This also happens to me when shooting bursts. Does it have something to do with the speed of the memory card? I use Sandisk 30mbps. Is there a need to upgrade to a 60mbps card?

I took your idea and I went through my camera settings to turn off RAW and made it take the most basic jpegs. The continuous shot worked perfectly! 480sparky is right about the internal buffer.

Thanks guys!

Overread · Apr 2, 2011

As Sparky said chances are your camera is hitting its buffer storage limit during a burst. There are two parts to this however; first is the cameras native ability to write data to the memory card and the other is the cards native ability to be written to. Your camera manual should list the specs for your camera body and outline its fastest possible writing speed - thus having a memory card equal to that speed will give you the best possible burst rate - faster cards will not give much/any bonus at all since whilst they can receive data faster the camera can't write any faster (in a real world a faster card might give a tiny advantage since values are never absolutes, but in practical terms you won't notice the difference).

As you've already tried - reducing the size of the file you're writing - by moving from RAW to JPEG - means smaller files to write and so the buffer fills up far slower before its met and can empty faster and so keep up a longer, faster stream of shots. Personally I would say if you're capping out at a burst of 4 shots in RAW mode I'd consider checking the speed of your memory card and your camera's write speed - I suspect that you can support a faster memory card and that it would be beneficial to consider purchasing one.

Stryker · Apr 2, 2011

@Overhead, I use a 50D and can do 6 frames per second per its brochure. I normally set my camera to the biggest RAW file when I shoot. When shooting at burst mode, do I have to shift to a medium size RAW to maximize burst speed? Sorry to highjack the thread, TNVO, but I guess we both have the same issues here. Thanks.

Overread · Apr 3, 2011

If your current card lets you hit 6FPS without any problems then you don't need to reduce the file size (ie use medium RAW) to speed up your burst since the camera won't go any faster than 6FPS. However if you reduce the file size the camera will be able to keep a greater speed over a longer duration of time before its shutter speed slows as the camera's writing buffer fills up.
You can get around that by of course using cards that are the fastest that your camera will support to write to.

Partly it comes down to what and how you're shooting as to if you need to reduce the RAW file size or even move into shooting JPEGs (remembering of course that you then lose some of the bonuses of the fullsized RAWs so its not without a cost). Even in action photography much of the time you don't need a massive burst of shots detailing every single action, what you do need is to practice timing your shots to capture the instant of the action, or just the microsecond before. That is a more reliable method than simply trusting in long bursts of shots, plus it saves you space on the card for more photos and also makes editing easier by giving you less to sift through.

Of course there will be times when you'll want a long burst of shots and then you might well make the choice to shoot at a "lesser" file format than fullsize RAW - the key is understanding your gain against your cost.