CP995 Delay Between Pictures

From what I've read, the CP995 lets you continue to shoot (with the photo captured in a buffer) while the camera is still writing the previous picture to the flash card.

But, some posters on Usenet have suggested that SanDisk flash cards are significantly slower than some others.

If you can continue shooting while the camera writes to the card, does it matter (within reason) if SanDisk cards are slower? Or, even with the buffer, is there still a delay before you can click the shutter again?

How many pictures can you fit in the buffer there is a write delay?

Thanks

Louis Cohen said:

From what I've read, the CP995 lets you continue to shoot (with the
photo captured in a buffer) while the camera is still writing the
previous picture to the flash card.

But, some posters on Usenet have suggested that SanDisk flash cards
are significantly slower than some others.

If you can continue shooting while the camera writes to the card,
does it matter (within reason) if SanDisk cards are slower? Or,
even with the buffer, is there still a delay before you can click
the shutter again?

How many pictures can you fit in the buffer there is a write delay?

Thanks

Click to expand...

That depends on how big the pictures are! ;-)

I did some experimenting recently, taking 2048 X 1536 pictures (about a 1.2MB file size) in continuous mode.

The camera typically took three pictures at one second intervals, then slowed down as the buffer became unavailable while it emptied to the CF.

I timed the seconds/frame once the camera settled down to the slower rate, and I also timed the transfer of all the photos to the PC. This was done to get an idea of the speed differences between cards in my 995.

Here are some results:

Bulk Transfer to PC Continuous Shooting
Vendor Card Size Files Size Xfer Sec KB/sec Sec/Frame
Nikon 8 6.99 13.6 514.0 5.0
Lexar 16 14.4 21.4 672.9 2.5
Kingston 64 17.8 29.8 597.3 7.9
Viking 128 21.2 30.7 690.6 3.6
IBM 1000 16.6 24.1 688.8 4.7

The Lexar 16MB supplied with the camera clearly performs very well in terms of getting data from the buffer, but the Viking 128MB and the IBM microdrive were both faster at getting information from the camera to the PC using the cameras USB connection.

Does anyone else have similar information for other brands and sizes? We should each have the 16MB Lexar that came with the camera as a reference point.

This is my third attempt to correct the formatting in the table!
Bulk Transfer to PC Continuous Shooting
Vendor Card Size Files Size Xfer Sec KB/sec Sec/Frame
Nikon 8 6.99 13.6 514.0 5.0
Lexar 16 14.4 21.4 672.9 2.5
Kingston 64 17.8 29.8 597.3 7.9
Viking 128 21.2 30.7 690.6 3.6
IBM 1000 16.6 24.1 688.8 4.7

I hope it works this time. Jeff

I give up!!! Please add tabs between the numbers.

Frustrating thing is it looks fine while I am entering the post.

JeffB said:

This is my third attempt to correct the formatting in the table!
Bulk Transfer to PC Continuous
Shooting
Vendor Card Size Files Size Xfer Sec KB/sec
Sec/Frame
Nikon 8 6.99 13.6 514.0
5.0
Lexar 16 14.4 21.4 672.9 2.5
Kingston 64 17.8 29.8 597.3 7.9
Viking 128 21.2 30.7 690.6 3.6
IBM 1000 16.6 24.1 688.8 4.7

I hope it works this time. Jeff

Click to expand...

Thanks, but I'm more interested in how long I have to wait between pushing the shutter button when I'm shooting single pictures. There was a fairly significant delay on my Kodak DC200 while it wrote to the flashcard.

Louis Cohen said:

Thanks, but I'm more interested in how long I have to wait between
pushing the shutter button when I'm shooting single pictures.
There was a fairly significant delay on my Kodak DC200 while it
wrote to the flashcard.

Click to expand...

Shooting 1.2MB pictures, then the limiting speed of the camera appears to be about one picture per second. The buffer will allow you to do this three times before it gets too full and there is a forced delay while it empties some space to the CF.

Here is where CF speed comes in - the faster cards seem to accept a pictures worth in less than three seconds, while the slow cards take almost eight.

The first picture goes directly to the buffer, and the speed of the flash card does not play any part until the buffer is too full to accept any more pictures and has to wait for the flash card to catch up.

So if it comes down to the card itself (if I got it right...), which 128MB CF card is the best? (the fastest?)

Thanks,

Aviv.

JeffB47487 said:

I timed the seconds/frame once the camera settled down to the
slower rate, and I also timed the transfer of all the photos to the
PC. This was done to get an idea of the speed differences between
cards in my 995.

Here are some results:

Bulk Transfer to PC Continuous Shooting
Vendor Card Size Files Size Xfer Sec KB/sec Sec/Frame
Nikon 8 6.99 13.6 514.0 5.0
Lexar 16 14.4 21.4 672.9 2.5
Kingston 64 17.8 29.8 597.3 7.9
Viking 128 21.2 30.7 690.6 3.6
IBM 1000 16.6 24.1 688.8 4.7

The Lexar 16MB supplied with the camera clearly performs very well
in terms of getting data from the buffer, but the Viking 128MB and
the IBM microdrive were both faster at getting information from the
camera to the PC using the cameras USB connection.

Does anyone else have similar information for other brands and
sizes? We should each have the 16MB Lexar that came with the
camera as a reference point.

Click to expand...

Here is some more info from my previous posts on the subject:

http://www.dpreview.com/forums/read.asp?forum=1007&message=1381397

http://www.dpreview.com/forums/read.asp?forum=1007&page=1&message=1498654

John

There have been MANY different card speed tests at http://www.rongalbraith.com The one consistent finding always seemed to be that the SanDisk cards were always very slow. The other finding seemed to be that the high end (10X) Lexar cards were good (as was any card with a Hitachi controller) Kingston & Delkin seemed to do well. (obviously there were others, but when I looked through the various tests I was only really choosing between Kingston,Delkin, Lexar & Sandisk. I settled on that great deal for the 256MB Kingston. (I think it was US$167 minus $20 rebate)

bois

John Fritz said:

John Fritz said:

I timed the seconds/frame once the camera settled down to the
slower rate, and I also timed the transfer of all the photos to the
PC. This was done to get an idea of the speed differences between
cards in my 995.

Here are some results:

Bulk Transfer to PC Continuous Shooting
Vendor Card Size Files Size Xfer Sec KB/sec Sec/Frame
Nikon 8 6.99 13.6 514.0 5.0
Lexar 16 14.4 21.4 672.9 2.5
Kingston 64 17.8 29.8 597.3 7.9
Viking 128 21.2 30.7 690.6 3.6
IBM 1000 16.6 24.1 688.8 4.7

The Lexar 16MB supplied with the camera clearly performs very well
in terms of getting data from the buffer, but the Viking 128MB and
the IBM microdrive were both faster at getting information from the
camera to the PC using the cameras USB connection.

Does anyone else have similar information for other brands and
sizes? We should each have the 16MB Lexar that came with the
camera as a reference point.

Click to expand...

Here is some more info from my previous posts on the subject:

http://www.dpreview.com/forums/read.asp?forum=1007&message=1381397

http://www.dpreview.com/forums/read.asp?forum=1007&page=1&message=1498654

John

Click to expand...