A80 and movies longer than 3 minutes?

[BentDragon]

Hi guys,

Can anyone with an A80 and fast CF card record movies longer than 3 minutes?

OR there iis a limitation of the A80 that only allows a maximum 3 min movie?

[patul]

AFAIK, Max duration is 3 minutes. There's no way to extend it.

[stduc]

Yep - 3 mins and times up! CANON are a bit behind the times on the movie front. Other manufacturers seem to be managing card capacity as the limit with 640*480 and 30 fps with sound movie modes. I think the reason is that the CANON cameras seem to write to internal memory first and write to the card only when "idle". Rather than on the fly. You can demonstrate this when taking a series of pictures. Take one and the write light starts to flash - but it stops flashing the second you half press the shutter! That's why getting the faster cards (for the A series anyway) is something of a waste of money.

[JohnnyE]

Buy a video camera if you want longer videos. Admit it - these still digital cameras are not meant to replace a good camcorder.

[stopbath]

Buy a video camera if you want longer videos. Admit it - these still digital cameras are not meant to replace a good camcorder.
Quite so...
The movie clip capability is just for 'moving snapshots', not for anything worthy of making a movie of, likewise movie cameras, can make 'still snapshots' but not anything worthy of putting on the wall.

The A series fills a buffer, then dumps it to the card (thus the 3 minute limit, A70 has even less when using the higher resolution movie clip.)