Mk III observation ( not an AF issue )

I dont remember reading it anywhere in the literature, but it seems to me that write speed is completely ( or almost completely... ) irrelevant on a MkIII. I have a bunch of Sandisk Ultra II CF cards and according to Sandisk's website, theyre no faster than 10MB/sec, which IIRC is only 66x. That being said, I can shoot 40 frames, take my finger off the shutter for a milisecond, shoot 40 more frames all while the activity LED is on.

Now, I could be wrong, but I was always under the assumption that on other EOS bodies, when the activity LED was on, the camera was "busy" and you couldnt take pictures. This was the big selling point of high speed cards to me. Faster card = less activity light = more possible shots.

However, as I stated, this clearly does not seem to be the case on the MkIII.

Is being able to shoot while the activity light is on something new? Or have you always been able to do that and Im just wrong?

AdamLewis wrote in post #4007669
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Is being able to shoot while the activity light is on something new? Or have you always been able to do that and Im just wrong?

Honestly, you're wrong, at least as long as we are talking about DSLRs, not P&S. Activity light will turn on when camera starts to write to the card, but you can continue shooting as long as the internal buffer still has remaining space.

Of course you can get a lot of shots with the MkIII even with a slow card, because the buffer is very large.

You're wrong, it just means that it's writing to the card. You probably just never noticed before. Card speed does matter in the sense that if you did fill that buffer you would be able to shoot more photos quicker as the photos were written to the card. The reason you were able to take 80 is because the mkIII will take over 100 jpegs at 10fps before the buffer becomes full.

Shadowplay wrote in post #4007791
You're wrong, it just means that it's writing to the card. You probably just never noticed before. Card speed does matter in the sense that if you did fill that buffer you would be able to shoot more photos quicker as the photos were written to the card. The reason you were able to take 80 is because the mkIII will take over 100 jpegs at 10fps before the buffer becomes full.

Learn something new everyday

Also, with the MkIII's larger files and faster 10FPS burst rate, I find I can flood the buffer faster on the MkIII than on the MkII with a slower card.