40d burst rate problem
 

Hi All,

I've just taken delivery of a new 40D and immediately wanted to test its 6.5fps burst speed. Disappointingly, it's nowhere near 6.5fps. Worried, I looked up videos of 40D shutter speeds so I could compare. It's noticeably slower than those in any of the videos, e.g. the below:

[url]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HOnfmsu3Y7Q&NR=1&feature=fvwp[/url]

I'm trying to diagnose the problem. I'm using a high shutter speed (1/800), high-speed continuous shooting drive and a (two year old) 4GB Sandisk Extreme III card.

Could it be the CF card? The burst from the camera is also slightly irregular. Not sure what this indicates. Any ideas?

Thanks all.

Might have been a good idea to say what file type you were shooting in as Raw will shoot a few frames and then slow down markedly. There is also a fast and slow setting for the frame rate so make sure you have the fast one selected. The low one is about 3 fps.

You can shoot for about 17 Raw images or 75 Jpegs. The speed of the memory card here has no bearing as the camera can't make full use of the Extreme III's bandwidth, I'm afraid the bottleneck is the image processor despite the urban myths around fast memory cards.

Hi Flake - I'm using the H setting (high speed) on continous shooting mode. Is that what you mean by the fast setting?

I was shooting large, fine Jpegs.

surely Canon give optimum lab type rates .In the real world if the camera has to focus etc you are not going to get 6.5 a sec.Best bet is a fully charged battery and prefocus on something using manual focusing if you really want to test it but how anyone can work out what 6.5 a second is is beyond me.

Burst rate is affected by several settings and custom settings.

ISO is the obvious one - the higher the ISO the lower the rate.
Noise reduction. Turn it off to get the best.
Focus speed - Canon always (Pretty much I think!) use the 300mm f2.8 IS L as a reference lense.
Various AF Custom settings could affect it too. One I think requires AF Lock on first shot or not.

As for measuring the rate, thats easy. Just fire a burst of say 10 or more shots, look at the shooting time and do a bit of maths!

High ISO noise reduction and HTP both need to be off.

I'd turn AF off as well.

[QUOTE=redsnapper;6076]Hi All,

I've just taken delivery of a new 40D and immediately wanted to test its 6.5fps burst speed. Disappointingly, it's nowhere near 6.5fps. Worried, I looked up videos of 40D shutter speeds so I could compare. It's noticeably slower than those in any of the videos, e.g. the below:

[url]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HOnfmsu3Y7Q&NR=1&feature=fvwp[/url]

I'm trying to diagnose the problem. I'm using a high shutter speed (1/800), high-speed continuous shooting drive and a (two year old) 4GB San disk Extreme III card.
Thanks all.[/QUOTE]

Hi, I use a 40D and shoot mainly motor sport. Earlier this year at Brands Hatch I shot 8 images of a motorbike rider coming off his bike (shot in RAW format), TV 1/750 AV5.6 with a EOS 70-200mm F2.8L IS USM lens and a x 2 extender, 1GB San disk extreme II card.
My camera recorded the start of the 1st image as 10:51:55 and the 8th at 10:51:57
I was very impressed with the performance and I managed to keep my finger on the shutter button and track the rider from the time he fell to the time it ended. Here are the images not the best as I am learning to improve my skill and technique

1.[img]http://farm4.static.flickr.com/3247/3535795496_4445dec2b0_b.jpg[/img]

2 [img]http://farm3.static.flickr.com/2382/3534977865_127c6c89b1_b.jpg[/img]

3 [img]http://farm3.static.flickr.com/2469/3534978587_9423e0a8a5_b.jpg[/img]

4 [img]http://farm3.static.flickr.com/2066/3534979447_4312e000a3_b.jpg[/img]

5 [img]http://farm3.static.flickr.com/2454/3535799758_620a3698f8_b.jpg[/img]

6 [img]http://farm4.static.flickr.com/3398/3535800704_2d45700b2c_b.jpg[/img]

7 [img]http://farm4.static.flickr.com/3595/3535801628_d8db234230_b.jpg[/img]

8. [img]http://farm3.static.flickr.com/2340/3535802624_63a1a49501_b.jpg[/img]

[quote=pavman;8250]My camera recorded the start of the 1st image as [B]10:51:55[/B] and the 8th at [B]10:51:57[/B] [/quote]

Are you absolutely sure about these times? Two seconds seems a remarkably short time for the rider first to go into a slide (shot 1) and then be standing admiring :( his bike (shot 8).

[QUOTE=Forseti;8311]Are you absolutely sure about these times? Two seconds seems a remarkably short time for the rider first to go into a slide (shot 1) and then be standing admiring :( his bike (shot 8).[/QUOTE]

Hi Agree with you that's the data from the EXIF not aware if the camera has the capability to record 1/10th of a second so only data available:)