I wrote about this issue 3 years ago on Flickr when I first changed over from Canon to Nikon.
The problem hit me on Monday when I was shooting the A-League Round 20 match and I was tracking Robbie Kruse with my D3 and the 70-200mm. Robbie weaved around for quite awhile and my D3 started hitting the burst buffer limit of around 15 images. From the 30 images sequence below, the images are named seq_min_sec. The D3 was setup for 14-bit lossless compressed. At the 36-38 sec mark the D3 is going at about the full 9fps. As it gets to the 40 sec mark it’s down to about 2fps and notice the big lag between images 23 and 25 when the D3 was clearing out the buffer onto the card. Then between images 27 and 29 I wish I had 9fps as missed Ricardino tapping in the ball from the Kruse cross.
I don’t often hit this as the bursts are around 3-5 images at best. Thinking this was strange I checked the manual and for my settings – 14-bit NEF, lossless compressed, the manual said the buffer is 16 images. Pretty much what happened to me. The buffer size limits is shown below. I’ve now changed my setting to use 12-bit compressed for sport to get another 4 images, and if I know I’m going to need more buffer, a JPEG setting for maximum burst buffer size.
Here are the buffer limits for a D3s. Note how much bigger the buffer is. 14-bit isn’t much of an issue anymore for sport with 36 images. But if you want to maximize the buffer you’d set it for 12-bit and get 6 more images. Or shoot in JPEG and get up to 82.
Blog
Nikon D3/D3s burst buffer limits and settings
Mac DVD Player deinterlace problem – solved
My DVD Player (ver 5.4) was showing a black screen and Google couldn’t shed any light on what the problem was. A bit of problem solving identified a setting in the player under Deinterlace. Seems selecting Optimal or Good Quality on my i7 Macbook Pro breaks the player. Better Quality works fine.
A-League Round 20
A late afternoon match so the sun was hitting half the pitch as usual. Not idea but got some nice high-contrast shots. Ran into the buffer limits on the D3 – need to see if I can optimise the settings a bit more to get the full 26 raw shot. Full gallery is here.
Christmas food
Duck, pavlova and dark chocolates…
Canon EOS 550D – 8 years after the Canon D60
The Canon D60 was my first DSLR. In 2002 it was USD$2,000 for the body. In 2010, the Canon EOS 550D is USD$799. Key stats: 6MP versus 18MP. So it was more than twice as expensive and had 1/3rd the number of pixels. How far we’ve come.
I had a play with a 550D tonight, with the kit lens and I was pretty impressed. Easy to use, no need for a manual to figure out most of the controls and very clean at high ISO. In fact, shooting a candle in a dark room at ISO2000 yielded a superb image that would have been better than the 1D Mk II and the pre Nikon D3 era cameras. I don’t have my 60D any longer but it would be quite an interesting exercise to compare the IQ back to back. Even though I’m not a Canon shooter any more, having switched to Nikon 3 years ago, I would have no hesitation in recommending this camera to someone looking for an entry level DSLR. However, I’d also want to have a good look at the Nikon 3100 which is at the same price point.