SD Card Speed

[JasonLambert]

I have been shooting with my class 4 card for a while now and never had a problem with it bogging me down if I needed to burst 3 or 4 shots (RAW). In fact I know when I first got the card it was able to take 6-10 shot bursts (RAW) without a problem.

The other day I was out taking some shots of my daughter and she was running so I held the shutter release down and got "click click............... click............... click" The first two were quick but the last two were about 3 seconds apart.

Now from what I have read, a class 4 has a minimum write speed of 4 MB/Sec but most do faster than their rating. I know I should be using a class 6 or greater in my XSI but just haven't gotten around to it. My question is, do SD cards slow down over time? Also, do you recommend one brand over another and why?

Thanks,
Jasn

 

[cfphoto]

Maybe try formatting it? I'm not an expert, but I believe I read somewhere, where "deleted" artifacts left on your card can slow it down considerable over time. Might be worth looking into to salvage some of those old cards.

 

[pbelarge]

Jason


Were the batteries fresh?

as mentioned above, have you recently formatted your card in the camera?

How full was the card?

What speed is your camera capable of?

 

[JasonLambert]

Yes, The batteries were fresh and I format the card in the camera after dumping the previous images onto the computer every time. This happens even when everything is fresh and I have just started shooting. My XSI should do a 3.5 frames per second burst shooting for up to 53 JPEG or six RAW frames. I can't even get close.

 

[cfphoto]

Jason


Were the batteries fresh?

as mentioned above, have you recently formatted your card in the camera?

How full was the card?

What speed is your camera capable of?

Ha, never thought of plain old batteries possibly being the issue, good catch.

 

[bigtwinky]

I dont recall that happening with my XSI, and I was shooting Class 4 Lexar cards. Odd... I think people have covered the basics of what to look for, batteries, formatting,...

I know when you do some in camera noise reduction for long exposures, it doubles the lenght of time that the picture takes to record to your card, but thats not your case. Are there other settings you did that require more camera processing?

In terms of which cards to buy, I've always had Lexar for my SD and Sandisk for my CF. Never had an issue with either

 

[Danksalot]

Were you using the flash? Your camera will wait for it to "charge" even it it's the camera's ready to take the next picture.

 

[BuS_RiDeR]

I format the card in the camera after dumping the previous images onto the computer every time.

Just a thought... Maybe your card is worn out... How many times have you formatted it?

One issue that flash memory has is that its usually only good for a certain amount of read/write cycles.

 

[KmH]

I format the card in the camera after dumping the previous images onto the computer every time.

Just a thought... Maybe your card is worn out... How many times have you formatted it?

One issue that flash memory has is that its usually only good for a certain amount of read/write cycles.

Memory wear isn't an issue until you approach 100,000 write/erase cycles.

www.wikipedia.org/Flash_memory

Was the ISO on Auto, and was high ISO noise reduction turned on?

 

[dhilberg]

Did you have the camera in continuous-focus mode and were you tracking the subject? Some bodies have a continuous-focus mode with a focus priority. The shutter won't release unless the subject is in focus, even if you're holding the shutter release button down. This will slow down your fps significantly while your camera tries to maintain focus. This is opposed to continuous-focus mode with shutter priority, where the shutter will be released whether the subject is in focus or not.

Usually the continuous+focus mode is available only on the higher-end bodies, so I'm not sure if it will apply to your XSI, but it's a thought. My D90 has it but it's only available in AF-A mode. You can't actually select it and apply it to AF-C mode like with the D300/D300s and above.

 

[DerekSalem]

As some people have noticed make sure to not using AI Servo and also make sure Highlight Tone Priority and noise reduction are turned off. All 3 of those things will slow down the burst *significantly*

 

[pbelarge]

I was going to mention if you had fiddled with some camera settings. The other posts covered that.

 

[JasonLambert]

Thanks Derek... Not sure when I turned those on. The AI-Servo I do use but the other two I didn't even know I had. Works much better now!

Thanks to everyone who helped!