Rebel XS

[Oblivion]

I just recently got a Canon Rebel XS, and have been thoroughly enjoying it. However, as time has passed, I have been having problems with continuous shooting. When I first got the camera, I was surprised at how quickly I could take pictures while on continuous. I'm speculating it would take around 2 pictures per second (or more). Seemingly all of a sudden, I noticed that it was taking much longer to take pictures. At this point on continuous, I can take one picture about every 4 seconds. (What makes even less sense is that It shoots Faster on RAW).

To clear things up I'm shooting on fully manual and do have a decent grasp of how the camera works. It takes the same amount of time to take the picture regardless of the battery life, shutter speed (I can max the shutter speed out and there's no change), aperture value, ISO speed, JPEG size, or lighting, and the result is the same. I've scoured my camera for a random option that could be slowing it down, I've reformatted my class 6 SDHC card and can't seem to fix it. Any ideas?

Also, while looking through the view finder directly after I take the picture, it says "busy" on the bottom left corner next to the light meter.

Thanks for the help,
-Oblivion

[Greg McCary]

Have you changed CF cards lately and do you format the card between shootings? Some write faster than others and they need formatted.

[brmill26]

Hmm, that's a very odd condition. In JPEG mode, the XS should shoot at 3 frames per second for however long you hold the shutter button. In RAW mode, it will shoot at 1.5 fps for up to 4 frames.

I don't own an XS, but off the top of my head, there are a few things that could be slowing it down. You may have checked some of these, but just to be thorough for anyone else who may read this post later:

1) I know you mentioned it above, but obviously shutter speed must be faster than 1/3sec in JPEG mode and faster than 1/2 sec in RAW mode. Slower speeds than that will of course mean the shutter is open longer than the camera's repeating rate. So be sure your shutter is at, say, 1/250 for testing purposes.

2) The card write speed must be higher than the potential data rate of the camera. A class 6 card is actually probably not fast enough. Class 6 means it can handle a minimum sustained speed of 6MB/sec. Your camera will shoot files that are about 8MB in size. So, consequently, in JPEG mode, you could be generating about 24MB/sec, which is well beyond the card's rated capacity. RAW files tend to be even larger, so even 1.5 RAW frames/sec is likely well over the card's capacity.

What that means is that the camera should shoot at full speed until the buffer (its memory) is full. Then it will quit shooting and show "Busy" either until it finishes writing all of the data to the card or enough of the data to allow you to shoot another frame or two. Thus, if you're holding the shutter button down, the speed would seem to all of a sudden become very sporadic and slow.

If this is the case, a faster speed card is in order. This is one disadvantage to SD cards at the moment; their write speeds are not as fast as the CF cards except on the expensive models. If you want/need high continuous speeds, you've got to step up to the plate and get a fast card too. Check a product like San Disk's Extreme III.

3) Noise reduction. This is tied to shutter speed, but if you have the noise reduction settings on Auto or On and you're shooting at longer shutter speeds (usually 1/10 or slower), the camera will take time to process the previous shot before being able to shoot another one. High ISOs can also affect it. If this is setting is on, turn it off if you want to maximize speed.


There are several other camera settings that can affect its speed. These are new features on the XS/XSi, so I do not have any personal experience with them. But I know they can slow things down.

4) Live View is one example. I know in typical shooting, live view slows down the camera operations significantly. So if you're in Live View, turn it off and use the optical finder.

5) The Auto lighting optimizer can slow down the camera similar to noise reduction. The camera takes extra time to process the images, which again slows down the continuous speed.


Check out all of those possibilities. If all of the settings check out, it's very likely that the card isn't fast enough. If you have a high speed card AND all of those settings check out, then I would contact Canon for warranty service.

[Oblivion]

Yes! It was the noise reduction! Thank you very much for your response Brmill. I had been messing with the "custom menu" option which allows you to chose from about 40 functions and place them in a handy menu (many of those functions cannot be adjusted elsewhere). Apparently I had dropped in the noise reduction function to see how it worked, and then deleted it from the list without turning it off. Anyway, thank you for your help!

-Oblivion

[brmill26]

Awesome, glad you found it! There are a TON of settings, esp. in the custom menu, that can have a big effect on the camera and it's easy to forget which ones are set to what... been there, done that!