40D Continuous Shooting

[Raymondo]

My EOS 40D wont take more than 6 shots on high speed continuous shooting. I have swapped 4 CF cards (all Sandisk ExtremeIII) and changed from RAW to JPEG to small JPEG and still it will not take more than 6 shots before pausing. Any help would be appreciated.

[Canon-Fodder!]

Re: 40D Continuous Shooting

Looks like a job for the Canon repair centre!

I can understand the possibility of a slight pause after 6 RAWs while it clears the buffer, but NOT with JPEGs. You should get far more than that before a pause... Remember that the theoretical capture-rate is just that - theoretical - under very best conditions... I think that [theoretical] capture rate for the 40D is c. 15 - but I've NEVER got anywhere near that with mine!

Does the same happen on the 'slow-speed' capture? That makes a great deal of difference, and I have found that 'keep-rate' is higher with the slower capture rate as well!!!

[hughbie]

Re: 40D Continuous Shooting

Does sound like a defect.

I rarely use high speed continuous on my 40D but did accidently trigger it with a new cable release - could not stop it, buffer went to well over 12 shots, on RAW.

[Millie]

Re: 40D Continuous Shooting

Sorry to hear of your problem, I have a 40D I don't use it all that often, I've never had that problem touch wood.
Hope you get it resolved.
I think the focusing method can make a differnce to the keeper rate, I've never used the remote cable release on high speed, but I have accidentally pushed the RS 80N3
into the lock position a few times.

Millie

[Canon-Fodder!]

Re: 40D Continuous Shooting

Another factor, of course, will be the file size being processed...

On a quick review, it appears my compressed RAW files are anything from 9.5 to over 18 Mb.

Clearly processing 6 x 18Mb files will take almost twice as long as 6 x 9.5Mb files and will fill the buffer twice as quickly!

Annoyingly, I can't clearly see what causes the file size differentials ! The amount of 'colour-data' is one thing and I guess that camera-set parameters will be another.

Anybody have any input on that?

[Millie]

Re: 40D Continuous Shooting

Annoyingly, I can't clearly see what causes the file size differentials ! The amount of 'colour-data' is one thing and I guess that camera-set parameters will be another.
Anybody have any input on that?

Not really, I think you're right, I've seen a variance of between around 8mb to around 13mb.
The difference usually seems the be the amount of colours.
Dramatically under exposed and over exposed amounts to the same thing, I noticed there is correlation between nearly empty histograms and small file sizes.

Milllie

[Raymondo]

Re: 40D Continuous Shooting

Thanks folks, it's off to the repair centre then. Ho hum.