Issues with Nikon D5100

Atticus29 · Nov 7, 2013

I'm relatively new to my Nikon D5100, and I have to photograph moths on a sheet for my job. I've begun to notice that my camera doesn't seem to let me take more than a few pictures in a row anymore, without my having to turn it off and on again (and sometimes I have to do this several times). Is this a common problem? Do any other D5100 users have suggestions for a solution?

robbins.photo · Nov 7, 2013

Nope, not a common problem I wouldn't think - I take my D5100 out every weekend and shoot pretty much all day with no issues, never have to recycle the power to get it to shoot. I'm assuming you would have looked for any error messages and posted them if they came up, so my first recommendation would be to try another memory card - put in a fresh memory card and use the camera to format it and see if the problem persists. If it does then does it give you any sort of an error message?

Tanman11 · Nov 12, 2013

If I take like 5 photos strait with out letting up the screen will go black but the green light is still on, the screen comes back on after 5 seconds.

sashbar · Nov 12, 2013

What SD card are you using? When using 45MB/sec card ( like SanDisc Extreme) there is no lag after several shots in cont. mode in RAW+Jpeg. With a 30 MB/sec (like SanDisc Ultra) there could be a one or two seconds lag after a brust of five-six shots, due to the slower card writinig speed. If you are using a cheap slow card that gap can be longer.

BUT if you have to turn if off and on again, then there is definitely something wrong with the camera. I have never heard about such problem before.

Tanman11 · Nov 12, 2013

im using a transcend 16GB on RAW+Jpeg

robbins.photo · Nov 12, 2013

Tanman11 said:
If I take like 5 photos strait with out letting up the screen will go black but the green light is still on, the screen comes back on after 5 seconds.

5 photos straight as in you hold the shutter button down and fire off a burst of 5 or more, or as in you take a picture, then pause and take another, etc?

Because if your talking about firing off long bursts with the image preview on most likely what is happening is that your taking enough photos quickly enough that your overwhelming the camera's buffer, and the camera is having to stop and write all that information out to the memory card before continuing. If this is the case, then first I'd start by going into the menu and shutting the image preview mode off. This will keep the camera from trying to display each image on the LCD as it is taken, which will reduce the delay for the files to write to the card considerably. It will also make your battery last a whole lot longer.

I would also recommend you look at getting a faster memory card. I use that Sandisk Extreme Pro, 95 mbs cards myself. The write speed of the card will make a big difference not only on how long the camera can shoot before it's overhemld to how fast it will recover once it does. The last thing to do would be to check to see what kind of images you are writing, I prefer just RAW files myself, I can always save to jpg later so I don't bother having the camera create a jpgs, I just do that myself later.