D70 firmware update, and FPS question...

rob1116 · May 30, 2005

I'm sure I'll get more than a few 'who cares' responses... but what's with the near-grayscale menu colours after the firmware update on the D70?

Also, I'm getting really lousy continuous frame rates (this is unrelated to the update)... maybe 1 FPS even at extremely high shutter speeds. Now, I'm still using a standard speed 2gig Sandisk CF card, but I thought that would only really restrict the number of shots I could take in a row. Right now, even if the buffer shows several shots left, it's slow as hell.

Any ideas? Tell me I'm missing something completely and my camera's just fine

Chase · May 31, 2005

The speed of the CF card will have a significant impact on your framerate, so I am guessing that is the root cause of the slow rate you're seeing. Are you shooting RAW or jpeg?

I haven't done the firmware update yet, so that will be something I'm yet to see.

Ant · May 31, 2005

The greyscale menus are supposed to be far easier to read in bright daylight than the old ones. I haven't checked yet so I can't tell.

As for your slow framerate, you've probably got NR turned on.

Ant · May 31, 2005

Chase said:
The speed of the CF card will have a significant impact on your framerate,

Not really. As long as there's space in the buffer the CF card has zero effect on your framerate. It's only when the buffer's full that the card speed is a factor, and even then, from my experience with a D70 and various different speed cards, it's not as significant a difference as is sometimes made out.

The type of camera also is a consideration. You could have the fastest CF card ever made but the camera can still only write data at a certain speed.

rob1116 · May 31, 2005

Ant said:
Not really. As long as there's space in the buffer the CF card has zero effect on your framerate. It's only when the buffer's full that the card speed is a factor, and even then, from my experience with a D70 and various different speed cards, it's not as significant a difference as is sometimes made out.

That's what I assumed. I remember getting great rates with this card a while ago.

Ant said:
As for your slow framerate, you've probably got NR turned on.

Eureka! This is my second D70, (I had one for a week then returned it... then couldn't live with it,

and I remember getting excellent frame rates with this card when I first bought the camera... but I couldn't remember if it started when I got the new one, or if the new one was working properly for a while too. I don't use Continuous shooting often, and didn't notice the effect on frame rate when I turned on NR a few months ago. WTF, it's supposed to only work on exposures 1s or longer no?

Anywho, I turned it off and it's blazin' along again, thx Ant!