Sports Mom Novice Photographer

[rco331]

Hello. We are part of a ministry at our local university that adopts athletes that come here to play their sport. We currently have 10 baseball and soccer players. I bought what I could afford which was a Canon PowerShot SX50 HS. I am still learning a lot about how to use it I don't know a lot about it . My question today is when I use the sports action mode in continuous shooting there's a lag with the picture posting to the card. Is that a settings issue or a card issue? The card that I have is a 4 GB . I have not been able to figure out a way to adjust the settings and use it in action mode. Any suggestions or comments? We have a soccer game Thursday and I would love to be able to take some decent action shots of our girls. Thank you.

 

[tirediron]

It is most likely a buffer issue; that is: The camera can always take pictures faster than it can write to the card, and so, there's a "buffer" (sort of like the RAM in your computer) built into the camera to "hold" the information until it is written to the card. Depending on the design of the camera, it will often slow down and/or stop when you give it more information than it can process. A higher quality card with a faster write speed may help, but it may not. There could also be some slowing as a result of auto-focus hunting (the camera taking it's time deciding where to focus). Unfortunately these are pretty much "live with it" issues on P&S cameras.

 

[Designer]

Is that a settings issue or a card issue?

The settings issue that might affect it is the size and quality of the file. IOW: Large fine is a much larger file, and will take longer to write to the card.

The other part is the SPEED of the card. The faster cards are rated for write speed ranging from 1 to 10. Unless it has a number like that, I'm guessing it is a 1. The faster cards cost a little more, but they're generally worth it.

(edit) I stand corrected about the write speed, but I thought read'n 'n rit'n was what the speed designation meant. Start saving up for a bodacious sports camera.

And of course, your camera. The higher end cameras that the pros use have a large buffer and they can write files faster as well. To maximize your camera's settings, experiment a bit with the size and quality of the file, and get a "10" card to see if that helps.

Personally, I have my camera set to large fine, but I don't try continuous shooting.

 

[KmH]

Memory cards are not rated for write speed.
They are rated for read speed.

Class 6 has sufficient speed to do HD video which would more demanding than shooting stills.
The Canon PowerShot SX50 HS is SDXC card capable (XC - extra capacity). See page 2 of the PowerShot SX50 HS User's Guide.

 

[robbins.photo]

Memory cards are not rated for write speed.
They are rated for read speed.

Hmmmm.....

Speed Class - SD Association

 

[robbins.photo]

It is most likely a buffer issue; that is: The camera can always take pictures faster than it can write to the card, and so, there's a "buffer" (sort of like the RAM in your computer) built into the camera to "hold" the information until it is written to the card. Depending on the design of the camera, it will often slow down and/or stop when you give it more information than it can process. A higher quality card with a faster write speed may help, but it may not. There could also be some slowing as a result of auto-focus hunting (the camera taking it's time deciding where to focus). Unfortunately these are pretty much "live with it" issues on P&S cameras.

It's a bit of both actually. The buffer in the SX50 is pretty small - and when your using slower memory cards it takes longer for the files to write, thus keeping the buffer fuller longer. When the buffer fills, the camera will stop everything until it can clear out enough of the buffer to allow it to continue.

You can improve performance a bit by going with a faster card - such as a Sandisk Extreme 95 mb per sec write card, but even with one it will only give you perhaps another second or less before the buffer fills up. The buffer on a bridge camera is just fairly small. As someone else mentioned having the camera record smaller images will make a difference as well, but really most likely you will still have to adjust your timing to keep from overwhelming the camera, and fire only small bursts occasionally.