HELP!! High speed continuous shooting with 7D

[Rocco]

Hey guys, I'm stumped on this one.


I'm beginning to do some time lapse photography and I came across a bit of a roadblock tonight. I was setting up for a shot in the city for a shorter segment of the time lapse, street level, and I was attempting a simple, very slow pan with my tripod. For this shot the idea was to use my 7d's high frame rate to attempt a video like shot without the people or cars seeming too choppy or alien.. and I am now very confused.


First of all, I understand the basics behind the buffer, and that there are only so many shots my camera can process before the buffer is full and my camera/card has to catch up, thus interrupting the continuous shooting. So I figured I'd use a smaller image size.. i.e. mRAW or sRAW or even one of the medium or small jpegs. Now, with my camera set on sRAW I can get about 150-160 images before my card is bogged down. (I have two Hoodman RAW 675x UDMA6 8GB cards.) But even on the smallest, lowest quality jpeg setting I can get four shots before I start to see "busy" in my viewfinder. This makes absolutely no sense to me. Why is it that I get a shorter duration with jpeg??


Basically I'm looking to be able to shoot continuously without any interruption for at least 300-400 images. Is this just something that's not possible? Maybe it's a setting on my camera that I'm just overlooking? Everything is set to manual with faithful image style, iso 100. Shutter speed is in excess of 500. Do I just need to bite the bullet and go with the 4fps setting that's reminiscent of my old Rebel XT?


HELP! []


Thanks in advance,


Rocco

[TakahiroW4047]

Could it be that because the camera needs to convert the RAW images to JPEG, that

[Sean Setters]

My guess is that you accidentally had the camera on SRAW + JPEG, else you were using a high ISO (both would affect burst rate substantially). Check page 59 of the 7D manual.

[neuroanatomist]

Even large/fine jpgs should shoot over 100 frames before it slows down. But, if you

[Dr Croubie]

I've done this before too (wondered about the low number of frames before 'busy', that is).


Try looking in the menus for 'High ISO Noise reduction', 'Long exposure noise reduction', and i think maybe 'highlight tone priority' too. turn them all off.


also, only shoot RAW/mRAW/sRAW, it's the JPEGs that get all the fancy processing, make sure you're not shooting JPEG too.


If you must shoot JPEG, also look at the number in the bottom right-hand corner of the viewfinder, it should be in the hundreds, not single-digits.


.


if none of them, how fast MB/s is that CF card you're using?

[Daniel Browning]

also, only shoot RAW/mRAW/sRAW, it's the JPEGs that get all the fancy processing, make sure you're not shooting JPEG too.

Unfortunately, Canon doesn't have a way to disable JPEG processing. Even if you are in RAW mode only (no JPEG), Canon still does a full round of heavy duty JPEG processing just so it can embed a 3 MB JPEG "preview" inside the raw file. I wish they would allow me to disable it, even if it meant a very slow image review, but they don't. Back in the good old days, Canon stored the preview separately, so that it didn't needless bloat the raw files. A guy can dream...

[neuroanatomist]

Actually, Dr Croubie, JPGs are faster. The RAW to JPG conversion is not the limiting factor, the processors are fast. It

[Rocco]

I've done this before too (wondered about the low number of frames before 'busy', that is).


Try looking in the menus for 'High ISO Noise reduction', 'Long exposure noise reduction', and i think maybe 'highlight tone priority' too. turn them all off.


also, only shoot RAW/mRAW/sRAW, it's the JPEGs that get all the fancy processing, make sure you're not shooting JPEG too.


If you must shoot JPEG, also look at the number in the bottom right-hand corner of the viewfinder, it should be in the hundreds, not single-digits.


.


if none of them, how fast MB/s is that CF card you're using?

The CF Card is a<span>Hoodman RAW 675x UDMA6. Plenty fast enough. Turned out that both the High ISO Noise reduction and Long Exposure Reduction were the culprates. It still bogs down after a bit shooting sRAW, but the highest quality jpeg will shoot 1000 frames if I want it too at 8fps. Thanks for all the help guys.

[Dr Croubie]

hmmm, clarification:


When i said