continious shooting

[ianlamb]

Hi,
I have a nikon D3000 for my first DSLR. I have been tyring out the continious shooting but when I use it the buffer memory indicates only a capacity of 4 shots before running out, then it has to write before I can start shooting again. Is there any setting I am missing that could increase this buffer size. I have it set on jpeg with a fine picture quality at the moment. Thanks.

[Anbesol]

Not familiar with how big the buffer is specifically on the D3000. Thats a pretty tiny buffer, even assuming that its a raw image. You can set your white balance before hand, shoot jpeg and the buffer will increase several times. It will increase even more on the reduced resolution settings.

You can still do continuous shooting, but the rate at which it continues past filling the buffer will depend on how quickly the buffer can dump to the memory card. A fast memory card obviously helps here.

Personally I have never found use for such continuous bursts that it fills the buffer. But, it has its applications in some photography (if you want to make a flipbook, maybe?).

*edit - just checked specs on imaging-resource, looks like the buffer should max at 6 frames on raw, and take about 6 seconds to clear buffer, so about 1 second for each consecutive shot. Would probably residually slow down as the bandwidth would be bottlenecked. Large/Fine jpeg gets about 16 frames and 3 seconds to clear buffer. Those specs were based on a SandiskExtreme 3 CF card, expect the number t be smaller with a typical speed CF card.

Id strongly suggest avoiding shooting raw for such a length of bursts anyway, thats an awful lot of big cumbersome files to be dealing with in any raw workflow (if you're worried about buffer dumping). Unless you've got several terabytes of data on and octacore machine, I'd find it completely irritating. Some photographers may be really elitist and strict about shooting raw only, but in this situation its terribly impractical with little if any actual benefit.

[havana_joe]

Very odd indeed. I have the D40, which of course is a very basic model, and when I use continuous I get about 2-3 frames per second until I've taken 10-15 shots, then it slows down to about 1 frame per second until I stop. I've never had it stop to dump the buffer early, although once I release the button it does pause for a good 20-30 seconds to dump the buffer.

I use a Kingston 4GB SDHC card, but even with the basic SanDisk 2GB SD cards the performance is the same. I also use JPEG @ fine, and I can't imagine the D40 having a bigger buffer than the D3000.

[Franglais]

Very odd indeed. I have the D40, which of course is a very basic model, and when I use continuous I get about 2-3 frames per second until I've taken 10-15 shots, then it slows down to about 1 frame per second until I stop. I've never had it stop to dump the buffer early, although once I release the button it does pause for a good 20-30 seconds to dump the buffer.

I use a Kingston 4GB SDHC card, but even with the basic SanDisk 2GB SD cards the performance is the same. I also use JPEG @ fine, and I can't imagine the D40 having a bigger buffer than the D3000.

I think I answered this question on some other forum, but I was curious to see what would happen with the D60, which is close to the D3000 (same 10Mpix sensor, same image processor). The D40 has a 6Mpix sensor and the previous generation image processor (I think):

- shooting RAW and JPG the D60 does 6 shots then slows down to about 1 shot per second
- shooting Basic JPG (smallest files) the D60 does 12 images then slows down but is still doing more than 1 image/second

[havana_joe]

I think I answered this question on some other forum, but I was curious to see what would happen with the D60, which is close to the D3000 (same 10Mpix sensor, same image processor). The D40 has a 6Mpix sensor and the previous generation image processor (I think):

- shooting RAW and JPG the D60 does 6 shots then slows down to about 1 shot per second
- shooting Basic JPG (smallest files) the D60 does 12 images then slows down but is still doing more than 1 image/second

I'd expect the D3000 to do about the same, you are right, my D40 is 6MP and uses the older image processor. Could OP have selected some kind of odd setting that is causing the issue? I couldn't duplicate the same bottleneck on my D40.

[Franglais]

I had another look round Internet and Ken Rockwell seems to have found something. See what he says about ADR here:

http://www.kenrockwell.com/nikon/d3000.htm

Try to deactivate ADR and see if things improve. Ken says that the D3000 takes 3 seconds to process an image with ADR, which reduces your effective buffer size to 5 shots. ADR doesn't exist on the D40 and the D60 in fact it's the first time I've heard of it.

[jskitee]

I just recently got a Nikon SLR and I've found the Sandisk SDHC cards seem to be a little faster. The store recommended that based on customer feedback and I can see a slight difference in speed over the Kingston Memory Card that I first bought for it.