hi speed shutter bursts

Hello all.. this is my first day here and my first post. So here goes.

I have a G6 and i love the hi speed multiple burst shots this thing can do.. My only complain is after a few seconds.. it starts to really lag. Even if i set the image quality and size to "low" it still lags and locks up my camera (while its saving) to the Memory Card.

I have learned at this forum that the G6 doesnt use the hi speed writing/reading technology that other cameras have to offer but is there anything else i can do to speed things up.

thanks.

Welcome to the forum!

I assume you're in the higher-speed of the two high speed modes? I think the main difference is that it doesn't display any captures on the LCD, which improves the throughput to the buffer, until the buffer fills.

You're right, the G, like most other digicams, has a memory bottleneck that prevents it from taking full advantage of high-speed memory cards. However, there are certainly some cards that are even slower than that internal bottleneck, and I believe the 32MB card included with the camera is one of those. If you know someone who has a high-speed card, try borrowing it and see if it makes any difference over your card?

Otherwise, I'm afraid there isn't much else you can do--we are limited by the buffer and write speed of the hardware.

You need to buy a dSLR. There, I said it now NO ONE ELSE is allowed to say that, OK?

(sorry, rebardwg, thats an inside joke)

Not sure there's much you can do, if the card is reasonably fast (most modern cards are faster than the camera can handle anyway, so that's probably not the bottleneck.)

If you don't need huge prints, try saving the image in a smaller format,and see if that helps. the middle resolution settings still make great 4x6 prints as long as you leave it on superfine.

(I don't know if changing the compression (superfine, fine, normal) would help… it would be interesting to see if superfine saves faster because it's doing less compression, or slower because the file's bigger... anyone ever test that? You should probably always shoot in superfine, though.)

Another idea that REALLY sacrifices quality but might be useful in some applications, is to shoot video in the best mode and pull frames from it.


Bb.

I tested the different compression settings, and I'm pretty sure I remember that the more aggressive compression settings did allow more shots before the buffer filled. If I remember correctly, I found that a smaller resolution, higher compression setting gave me an unlimited buffer--that is, the throughput was lower than the camera/card bottleneck. It wasn't a resolution I'd like to normally shoot at, but I don't think it was the lowest, either.

Bryan--I definitely appreciate the joke

So, to clarify, the bottleneck isn't processing speed (the in-camera compression/sharpening​/white balance, etc), it's file size, then? I guess that makes sense, otherwise a RAW file would be really fast.

I guess that makes sense, downsampling in photoshop then saving it is much faster than saving a large file.

B.

I will test as soon as i get home, but will the ISO speed not make a difference? I remember shooting before in lowest quality with ISO 400 and manual focus and my G6 just kept on taking pictures with no lag, no matter how long i kept the shutter pressed in.

I'd be interested to see your results, but I can't think of how ISO would affect the size of the data being written to the buffer. I'm guessing that the lowest quality affected the buffer more?

Tried high-speed shooting on my G5 with manual focus, and exposure settings. ISO50 and ISO400 made no difference.

And Bryan, I downloaded video to my PC for the first time and, ugh, it is truly disgusting - my mates crappy little Samsung is better than this (it does 640x480).

Vidio on any still camera is a Toy function.
Even the cheapest vidio camera will do better.

still it can be better than nothing.

Terry_______________

kully, the G6 does 640x480, but only 30 seconds at a time.

(edit: just noticed you have a G5, not a G6, so maybe it's not 640x480)

It's no video camera of course, the frame rate is slower and you can't focus or adjust anything as you shoot, and the sound's not great, but I've brought it into iMovie and iDVD to make DVDs for the grandparents, and it's not bad, it's comparable to the stuff i digitally converted from my old cheap analog video camera.

If you're talking about the stills, they're 640x480 at 15 frames per second. they don't look great, but it's there as an option if getting a series of frames is more important than image quality.

Yup, the G5 does 320x240, which looks bad even on a small TV.


But I didn't buy the camera for films so it's just another position on the dial that I never use.

Sorry, have been in Mozambique for past two weeks and internet connection was crappy to say the least. Well, ISO settings definitely does not make a difference.

I put my G6 on lowest quality settings on either ISO and experienced no lag on my photos as long a keep the shutter pressed in. If you let your finger go, then you have to wait for the camera to finish writing to disk before snapping again.