Is there a CF card that will let me shoot continuous?

[keith204]

My camera takes 6.5 10MP pics per second, and the buffer lasts for 75 images.

Question is... does a CF card exist (extreme 4 maybe?) that will keep up with the photos being taken, so that the 75 image buffer doesn't get filled up and the camera stall? For example... is there a card where the CARD will fill up before the buffer does, if I just keep my finger on the shutter at 6.5FPS?

I can count the times when this would have been useful on one hand, so not much...but wondering if this is a possibility.

I'm sure i'll get the "back in the day, we had to have skill..." sermon... Bring it on!

Nah, like one of the times I needed this was when I was shooting a dodge viper event, and one part of it was the "Drive" where 50 cars flew past me in about 1 minute on a windy road. I sooo wish I would have had this capability then.

Any ideas if there are fast enough CF cards for me ?

 

[usayit]

I don't have transfer rate specs on your camera but most likely the issue is not the card but the camera's ability to write to that card. Once you get a card that is faster than the camera, the bottleneck is the camera itself. Dumping from the buffer to the card is not instantaneous.

Even at 50 cars per minute (at worst 1 car per second), you shouldn't have problems shooting in JPG with 75 frame buffer... that is unless you are shooting off your camera like it is a movie camera.

What media card are you using?


btw.. back in the day we had bulk loaders with 250 frames and cameras that could do 10fps BUT you tried not to blow threw the whole thing in 25 seconds.

 

[Sideburns]

there is not a card that fast...but also..the transfer rate on your camera would never keep up even with a card half as fast as it would need to be.

 

[Jeff Canes]

I shot a lot of wakeboarding with a 1D M2n using mostly the extreme3 SD & CF cards now. Although it is hard for me to quantify IMO there was a big improvement when I switch from the Ultra.

 

[astrostu]

Yep - the bottleneck is the camera. It has to both process the photos and write them to the card. If the on-board memory buffer were larger, the processor faster, and card I/O faster, then you'd start to get to a bottleneck on the card.

 

[Bevel Heaven]

for that 1 situation, you should have used a high end diital video camera, then pulled out the frames you wanted....

Personally, I don;t get it - I sit there in the corner all day, click... click, click,...... click........ And some other guy is blasting off 8 or a dozen shots every time a bike comes through the corner. Where is the fun [skill] in that I ask?

 

[keith204]

for that 1 situation, you should have used a high end diital video camera, then pulled out the frames you wanted....

Personally, I don;t get it - I sit there in the corner all day, click... click, click,...... click........ And some other guy is blasting off 8 or a dozen shots every time a bike comes through the corner. Where is the fun [skill] in that I ask?

I figured there'd be a response like this

Nah, it's all good. However, to some people photography is a business, and for some people an art. For me...both. At this particular event, they wanted tons of pictures of their cars, and I wanted cash . However, at the Texas Speedway NASCAR race (going for fun, not for jobs) I practiced my shutter-speed skill as we were on row 5, and the cars were blasting past at 190mph holding my 70-200 to frame the car, and just clicking the button without panning, to try to work on my "fun [skill]". Nobody was counting on pictures, and I wasn't planning on selling them for money.

Ah, and a video camera to rip frames from... ah yes. I failed to mention that while I have a nice camera, I am still a married college student.

-----------------------------------
THE TEST

I did some tests to see exactly what I could figure out about my camera's shutter speed, buffer, and the card's write times.

40D, 6.5 FPS, 250 ISO, 1/250sec shutter, f/1.8
---gets me a 70 frame buffer. (75 if I would've used 100ISO)

TEST 1: Old Hitachi Microdrive 4GB...pretty slow.
Photos taken before having to make room in buffer: 94
Time taken to refill buffer from 0-70: 42 seconds

TEST 2: New Sandisk Extreme3 2GB
Photos taken before having to make room in buffer: 105
Time taken to refill buffer from 0-70: 12 seconds

----------------------------------------------
VERDICT: maybe a new card would help...however, why on earth would I need a new card!? The Extreme3 seems to perform pretty well. I assume that you can squeeze 94 and 105 photos out of one shutter hold because while youre shooting the photos in buffer are being written to card simultaneously...and with the faster card, the buffer stays clear a bit quicker.

If I'm in this VIPER situation again, I'll probably just put the camera in Large Normal (not fine) mode or Medium quality mode so that I can get a ridiculous amount of frames in.

I'm completely happy with the Sandisk Extreme 3's quick buffer clear time. Very impressed, and I see no reason to get another card.

More than anything, I was just curious if this was possible to completely bypass the buffer . Thanks!

 

[usayit]

Comparing a microdrive with a minatured harddrive with physical moving parts to a flash solid state memory card doesn't tell you much. Microdrives are inherently VERY slow.

 

[bango707]

for that 1 situation, you should have used a high end diital video camera, then pulled out the frames you wanted....

and be left with a 1k image if you're lucky? Thats not taking into account that most video cameras shoot about 1/60 of a second. If you were going to try and shoot video (obviously HD) then the camera would run you upwards of $800 to get something that could shoot high speed.
The Red and Viper are capable of shoot 2K images and above but screw that if all you want are still images.

 

[Bevel Heaven]

oh another thing I just thought of - I *always* re format my cards after I dump the images onto my 'putor. You might want to try that yourself and see if anything speeds up for you.....

 

[Garbz]

Why would it? A write is a write. And formatting a card doesn't actually erase anything it just marks it as though there's no files on it.

 

[soylentgreen]

Well I just picked up the PNY 266x 4GB card for my 40D. It run UDMA so can run almost as fast as the Lexmark 300x and Sandisk Extreme IV. I agree with the earlier post in that it is a camera issue, not the card. Shooting in RAW though, I was able to squeeze out 2 more frames before the buffer filled at 18 shots as suppose to 16 with my Sandisk Ultra II. didn't even bother to try it with my microdrive.