Nikon D3 RAW Buffer?

kriyababaji

G'day

I am hoping someone can help me make some sense of the RAW buffer (not jpeg...as I never shoot in jpeg) capicity of the new D3. The D2x has a 17 shot buffer, which when shooting wildlife never seems quite adequate. So when I see the D3 has a 20 shot buffer this seems even more insufficent at 9/11 fps!

But there are other factors to possibly consider?

1. The Write speed from the buffer to the card, is this considerably faster with the D3 than the D2x? If the buffer clears extraordinarily fast, a 20 shot RAW buffer may not be a serious limitation of this otherwise improved camers.

2. Dual cards? Does each card have its own buffer? If you jam one buffer/card does the camera start to write the other buffer/card? I am just guessing here, maybe the dual card system only offers the benefit of increased storage?

Please if anyone can expand on this seemingly apparent weakness of an otherwise amazing camera, I would love to know! I just can't believe that Nikon would make such a advanced camera that has a smaller RAW buffer capacity than the D200?


Thanks for your input.

Shane

ziggy53

kriyababaji wrote:

G'day

I am hoping someone can help me make some sense of the RAW buffer (not jpeg...as I never shoot in jpeg) capicity of the new D3. The D2x has a 17 shot buffer, which when shooting wildlife never seems quite adequate. So when I see the D3 has a 20 shot buffer this seems even more insufficent at 9/11 fps!

...

I have only seen one source that claims a 20 shot buffer for RAW. I would wait for the formal reviews against production models.

Since the D3 can, apparently, store 12 bit and 14 bit RAW files, I would expect some difference between the two settings.

kriyababaji wrote:

...

But there are other factors to possibly consider?

1. The Write speed from the buffer to the card, is this considerably faster with the D3 than the D2x? If the buffer clears extraordinarily fast, a 20 shot RAW buffer may not be a serious limitation of this otherwise improved camers.

...

The Nikon D3 apparently has UDMA which could yield very nice transfer speeds. What those speeds are is unknown because, again, there are no production models to test.

kriyababaji wrote:

...

2. Dual cards? Does each card have its own buffer? If you jam one buffer/card does the camera start to write the other buffer/card? I am just guessing here, maybe the dual card system only offers the benefit of increased storage?
...

It would appear that the D3 has a single buffer to store the images before processing.

It appears that the the dual CF card support can provide:

Increased capacity, or
Duplicate storage (safety), or
RAW on one card and JPG on the other card.

kriyababaji wrote:

...
Please if anyone can expand on this seemingly apparent weakness of an otherwise amazing camera, I would love to know! I just can't believe that Nikon would make such a advanced camera that has a smaller RAW buffer capacity than the D200?


Thanks for your input.

Shane

This is still a pretty amazing camera, no matter how you cut it. Let's wait for some formal reviews and user opinions before deciding if it really has problems or not.