Speed of saving

[dnperfors]

Hi all,
In the last view weeks I heard and saw on various sites that shoot photos in JPEG is faster than shooting in RAW. Normally this shouldn't be a noticeable, but when using shooting with continuous burst it supposed to make a difference.

I find it hard to believe, because I would think that it takes less time to just write the sensor data to a file, compared to the whole automatic post processing that is done when shooting in JPEG.

Can you tell me where my assumptions go wrong?

[ntx]

David, shooting JPEGs in continuous mode is better than doing the same in RAW if you have to capture an action that takes many seconds to happen.
The number of photos you can store at full shooting speed depends on the camera buffer. When the buffer is full you have to wait to save the shots to the card... and the card is the bottle neck.
I have made a test with a Sandisk 4GB Extreme class 10 (30 MB/sec): in a 15 seconds burst I can take 29 JPEGs against 11 RAW+JPEG and 16 RAW-only for the same burst time.

If you make a burst of only 2/3 shots you won't fill the buffer, so there's no difference shooting RAW or JPEG... but if you keep pressed you'll easily see the difference.

Bye
Jenner

[Black Pearl]

Yep, its down to how fast the camera can clear its buffer to the card.

An average jpeg on my D300s is about 7mb so a ten shot burst will see the camera having to dump about 70mb to the card.
The RAW files are around 25mb so the same burst will see the card having to deal with 250mb - quite a difference particularly bearing in mind the camera will spit that amount out in just over a second.

[Geoff F]

Just a couple of extra thoughts, David.

Shooting Raw can make all the difference when editing problem photos which will far outweigh any shooting difficulties.

But speaking personally, I rarely make burst shots because I tend to find that I get a sharp first image followed by a series of poor results caused by shutter bounce.

[Black Pearl]

If you are shooting Macro hand-held then a short burst often works better than a single shot. The reason is if you stab at the button you can cause minor camera movement that is magnified by the close working distances, this is gone once the camera has fired a second or third time.

[scoped]

If you are shooting Macro hand-held then a short burst often works better than a single shot. The reason is if you stab at the button you can cause minor camera movement that is magnified by the close working distances, this is gone once the camera has fired a second or third time.

Can't you delay the time after you shoot for the actual shot to be taken by 2 seconds or so?
if that makes sense

[dnperfors]

Well it is not really that I shooting much in burst, or that I want to shoot in JPEG, but I was just wondering why burst shooting was faster with JPEG than with RAW. I obviously didn't think about writing to the card, which is as always the slowest action that exists...
So as soon as writing is faster than lightning, it would be better to burst shoot in RAW than in JPEG :P but that time will never come I think...
Thanks for the comments anyway

[Black Pearl]

Can't you delay the time after you shoot for the actual shot to be taken by 2 seconds or so?
if that makes sense

You can with some bodies but the viewfinder goes black as it's a form of mirror lock-up so you'd lose what you were seeing.

I read the continuous shooting tip on a macro forum and it seems to work - I certainly go through a sort of 'got it' in my head when shooting stuff like insects and 'grab' the shot before the little blighters move.

[Black Pearl]

Can't you delay the time after you shoot for the actual shot to be taken by 2 seconds or so?
if that makes sense

You can with some bodies but the viewfinder goes black as it's a form of mirror lock-up so you'd lose what you were seeing.

I read the continuous shooting tip on a macro forum and it seems to work - I certainly go through a sort of 'got it' in my head when shooting stuff like insects and 'grab' the shot before the little blighters move.