40D Burst Firing

stromhammer

I just upgraded to a Canon 40D from a 20D. According to the manual for the 40D it should fire @6.5 fps for up to 120 frames or so. That's w/ a fully charged battery and a fast CF card. I have a 4 gig/300x Lexar card and no matter what settings I use (i.e. iso, shutter speeds, file format) I can only get 7 or 8 frames before it slows down to about 3fps.

Is there a setting somewhere that I'm missing? Are there faster cards that I haven't heard of yet? Has anyone else had this issue?

pathfinder

Shooting RAW, or jpgs?

20DNoob

I'm imagining the 120 number comes under shooting in perfect conditions AND shooting jpeg. I can go up to large regular jpeg and the counter in the viewfinder states 99(I believe it maxes out at that but shoots beyond), but once I change to large fine it drops to 75.

stromhammer

20DNoob wrote:

I'm imagining the 120 number comes under shooting in perfect conditions AND shooting jpeg. I can go up to large regular jpeg and the counter in the viewfinder states 99(I believe it maxes out at that but shoots beyond), but once I change to large fine it drops to 75.

Ive tried both jpeg and raw. Same results.

The counter in my view finder reads a constant "6" regardless of the settings.

20DNoob

Ok, something else just occurred to me.

Take a shot and look at it on the rear lcd, on the the top right of the screen it should say something like.

100-XXXX

100 being the folder and XXXX being the file number. If it's approaching 9999 the camera will slow things down as it's getting nearer the folder size limit.

If that's the case go to the menu and the fifth selection from the left(the first wrench) and scroll down to the File numbering option. Once there push the select button on the Quick Dial and scroll down to manual reset and press the select button.

Hopefully this should sort it out for you.

Good luck.

ziggy53

The Canon 40D is known to slow down if you have noise reduction turned on, and the Highlight Tone Priority "may" affect the buffer as well (but not to the degree that the noise reduction affects it.) ISO and shutter speeds will also affect burst speed and depth. Lower ISOs are better as are faster shutter speeds.

In Large-Fine JPG acquisition the buffer limit is 75.

If you want the best write speeds to the card, for the 40D, use something like the Sandisk Extreme IV 2GB, a virtual bargain nowdays and "measured" speeds faster than most other cards. Incidentally, the Lexar Pro 133x 2GB (and Lexar Pro 133x 4GB) tested better than the Lexar Pro 300x 4GB in the 40D, but not as fast as several Sandisk cards.

http://www.robgalbraith.com/bins/camera_multi_page.asp?cid=6007-9257

stromhammer

Noise reduction! I never would have figured that out. But it did the trick. Looks like I'm in business.

Thanks for the help.

David