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G2 Slow to write to card

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Lance Robertson

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Mesa, AZ, US
I'm currently trying to decide between a Canon G2 / G3 and Nikon 4500. Most of our pictures are snapshots and point and click type stuff but we do print out alot of our pictures when we use the camera on vacation and such. I went to Best buy to look at the G2 / 4500 cameras they had to test them out. The guy gave us a Lexar CF card that came with the 4500 (saw him take it out of a retail box) to take pictures with while we were there. The 4500 has a super slow lag time when the camera is not prefocused (which is what we want to avoid as most of our pictures are tying to catch my boy doing something funny) But the G2 has a bit of a lag time too (although I don't think it was set to continuous focus because it took a while to focus the camera when we zoomed in on something). Anyway after taking the picture with the Canon it took what seemed like 3 or 4 seconds just to write the picture to the card. This seemed awfully slow. We have a Nikon 950 that we are replacing and it is fast writing pictures out to the card. Is this normal of the G2 or is it possibly just a bad camera because of the abuse it has taken being a demo model? I like the camera but hope I can find some settings to eliminate the shutter lag and the time to write the picture to the card. (BTW we use a San Disk 128MB and 40MB cards at home).

Lance
 
You were probably given a painfully slow card, the G2 is pretty fast with fast cards, and the G3 is even faster, there's roughly no writing lag
Lance Robertson said:
I'm currently trying to decide between a Canon G2 / G3 and Nikon
4500. Most of our pictures are snapshots and point and click type
stuff but we do print out alot of our pictures when we use the
camera on vacation and such. I went to Best buy to look at the G2 /
4500 cameras they had to test them out. The guy gave us a Lexar CF
card that came with the 4500 (saw him take it out of a retail box)
to take pictures with while we were there. The 4500 has a super
slow lag time when the camera is not prefocused (which is what we
want to avoid as most of our pictures are tying to catch my boy
doing something funny) But the G2 has a bit of a lag time too
(although I don't think it was set to continuous focus because it
took a while to focus the camera when we zoomed in on something).
Anyway after taking the picture with the Canon it took what seemed
like 3 or 4 seconds just to write the picture to the card. This
seemed awfully slow. We have a Nikon 950 that we are replacing and
it is fast writing pictures out to the card. Is this normal of the
G2 or is it possibly just a bad camera because of the abuse it has
taken being a demo model? I like the camera but hope I can find
some settings to eliminate the shutter lag and the time to write
the picture to the card. (BTW we use a San Disk 128MB and 40MB
cards at home).

Lance
Click to expand...
 
I was hoping that was the problem. My 950 writes relatively fast and I would expect the G2 to be faster than it. Thanks,

Lance
Marc-O said:
Lance Robertson said:
I'm currently trying to decide between a Canon G2 / G3 and Nikon
4500. Most of our pictures are snapshots and point and click type
stuff but we do print out alot of our pictures when we use the
camera on vacation and such. I went to Best buy to look at the G2 /
4500 cameras they had to test them out. The guy gave us a Lexar CF
card that came with the 4500 (saw him take it out of a retail box)
to take pictures with while we were there. The 4500 has a super
slow lag time when the camera is not prefocused (which is what we
want to avoid as most of our pictures are tying to catch my boy
doing something funny) But the G2 has a bit of a lag time too
(although I don't think it was set to continuous focus because it
took a while to focus the camera when we zoomed in on something).
Anyway after taking the picture with the Canon it took what seemed
like 3 or 4 seconds just to write the picture to the card. This
seemed awfully slow. We have a Nikon 950 that we are replacing and
it is fast writing pictures out to the card. Is this normal of the
G2 or is it possibly just a bad camera because of the abuse it has
taken being a demo model? I like the camera but hope I can find
some settings to eliminate the shutter lag and the time to write
the picture to the card. (BTW we use a San Disk 128MB and 40MB
cards at home).

Lance
Click to expand...
Click to expand...
 
most of our pictures are tying to catch my boy doing something funny) But the G2 has a bit of a lag time too (although I don't think it was set to continuous focus because it took a while to focus the camera when we zoomed in on something).

LANCE... catching "the moment" with a moving target like kids is really tough under any circumstance..film or digital. Worse with digital. But the G2 has a continuous shooting mode that can pop off shots at 1.5 or more per second .. a feature that will give you a fighting chance to get that perfect expression.

--
joel albert
[email protected]
 
I have several Sandisk cards and depending on file size it may take a second or two for the camera to write to the card. I usually don't notice it until I need to switch immediately to Playback mode. I also picked up a 256mb 12x Lexar but haven't run any tests to see how much faster it really is. The regular Sandisk is one of the slower cards.
Lance Robertson said:
Anyway after taking the picture with the Canon it took what seemed
like 3 or 4 seconds just to write the picture to the card. This
seemed awfully slow. (BTW we use a San Disk 128MB and 40MB
cards at home).

Lance
Click to expand...
--
http://www.pbase.com/golfpic/the_dome
 
Actually, I believe it goes up to 2.5 fps. But don't expect film camera-like shotting response in a digital. These cameras just aren't there yet. The AF is too slow, and the lag, while improving, is still way behind the nearly instantaneous response of a film camera.

Oddly enough, the digital cameras with the fastest lag times are often the less expensive ones with modest zoom lenses. Generally, the longer the zoom, the greater the lag.
jralbert said:
most of our pictures are tying to catch my boy doing something
funny) But the G2 has a bit of a lag time too (although I don't
think it was set to continuous focus because it took a while to
focus the camera when we zoomed in on something).

LANCE... catching "the moment" with a moving target like kids is
really tough under any circumstance..film or digital. Worse with
digital. But the G2 has a continuous shooting mode that can pop
off shots at 1.5 or more per second .. a feature that will give you
a fighting chance to get that perfect expression.

--
joel albert
[email protected]
Click to expand...
 
I can suggest Lexar 12x card or Sandisk Ultra card. They are fast cards. Standard Sandisk card is like 2x card. That is why it is cheaper and slower. On my Lexar 12x 128MB card and use Superfine JPEG as well as RAW, it took a couple of seconds to write to card. I am happy with it. Tom
 
Transcend 25x or Ridata 28X, hands down, they're the fastest cards and also among the cheapest, while still being more than reliable (most sellers will give you lifetime warranty on them). You can find both around $80-90 :)
Walter001 said:
Felix W said:
Check the dpreview test results, and take my word from an owner of
Sandisk, Delkin, and Viking cards.

Lance Robertson wrote:
(BTW we use a San Disk 128MB and 40MB
Walter001 said:
cards at home).
Click to expand...
--
Canon G2 and S110
http://www.pbase.com/harpua
Click to expand...
Click to expand...
 
Joel,

Oh yeah I know that catching the moment is tough. We take about 100 shots a month at minimum so a film camera would be way too expensive. We like digital and have been using it since '99 and while we understand it has limitations we just want to find the camera that has the least amount of them. I will look into the continuous shooting mode as well thanks.

Lance
jralbert said:
most of our pictures are tying to catch my boy doing something
funny) But the G2 has a bit of a lag time too (although I don't
think it was set to continuous focus because it took a while to
focus the camera when we zoomed in on something).

LANCE... catching "the moment" with a moving target like kids is
really tough under any circumstance..film or digital. Worse with
digital. But the G2 has a continuous shooting mode that can pop
off shots at 1.5 or more per second .. a feature that will give you
a fighting chance to get that perfect expression.

--
joel albert
[email protected]
Click to expand...
 
Walter,

Oh we definitely don't expect film like response. I will look into a cheaper camera for the "around the house shooting" (Do you know of any of the cheaper ones for that type of shot?) I like the nicer cameras for vaction where the shots will be set up a bit more and we don't need the "instant" shot for catching something.

Lance
Walter001 said:
Oddly enough, the digital cameras with the fastest lag times are
often the less expensive ones with modest zoom lenses. Generally,
the longer the zoom, the greater the lag.
jralbert said:
most of our pictures are tying to catch my boy doing something
funny) But the G2 has a bit of a lag time too (although I don't
think it was set to continuous focus because it took a while to
focus the camera when we zoomed in on something).

LANCE... catching "the moment" with a moving target like kids is
really tough under any circumstance..film or digital. Worse with
digital. But the G2 has a continuous shooting mode that can pop
off shots at 1.5 or more per second .. a feature that will give you
a fighting chance to get that perfect expression.

--
joel albert
[email protected]
Click to expand...
Click to expand...
 
Well it was a lexar that we were using at Best Buy. Sandisk is what we have at home and it is rather quick on our Nikon 950. Less than a second most of the time. This lexar was taking almost 3 seconds at times to write the pic to the card.

Lance
Felix W said:
Check the dpreview test results, and take my word from an owner of
Sandisk, Delkin, and Viking cards.

Lance Robertson wrote:
(BTW we use a San Disk 128MB and 40MB
Felix W said:
cards at home).
Click to expand...
--
Canon G2 and S110
http://www.pbase.com/harpua
Click to expand...
 
I will look into these more closely. The lexar we were using at Best Buy I believe was a 12X one. Perhaps I can sell my 128MB and 40MB Sandisk and get soemthing a bit faster.

Lance
Tom Vickers said:
I can suggest Lexar 12x card or Sandisk Ultra card. They are fast
cards. Standard Sandisk card is like 2x card. That is why it is
cheaper and slower. On my Lexar 12x 128MB card and use Superfine
JPEG as well as RAW, it took a couple of seconds to write to card.
I am happy with it. Tom
Click to expand...
 
okay we have all of these theories about compact flash card...

I have a few question for you Lance...

When you say 3-4 Sec.. is it the time between one shot to another shot... persay... you snap one pic, and have to wait 3-4 sec to snap another one?

If such... here is my theory...

did the camera review set to 2 sec? If it does, it will show the review for 2 sec!!!, you can't overide this... you have to wait!!! before you can take another pic.

Since I have a 256mb memory card, and the LCD is too small to use for examining the pic, I usually just save everything, and do the deletion on the computer. Thus I change the REVIEW to "Off".

With no preview... you can almost instantanously take the next pic, since G2 has a buffer that is large enough to store the pic...

Just my 2 cents!!!

Jojosung
Lance Robertson said:
I'm currently trying to decide between a Canon G2 / G3 and Nikon
4500. Most of our pictures are snapshots and point and click type
stuff but we do print out alot of our pictures when we use the
camera on vacation and such. I went to Best buy to look at the G2 /
4500 cameras they had to test them out. The guy gave us a Lexar CF
card that came with the 4500 (saw him take it out of a retail box)
to take pictures with while we were there. The 4500 has a super
slow lag time when the camera is not prefocused (which is what we
want to avoid as most of our pictures are tying to catch my boy
doing something funny) But the G2 has a bit of a lag time too
(although I don't think it was set to continuous focus because it
took a while to focus the camera when we zoomed in on something).
Anyway after taking the picture with the Canon it took what seemed
like 3 or 4 seconds just to write the picture to the card. This
seemed awfully slow. We have a Nikon 950 that we are replacing and
it is fast writing pictures out to the card. Is this normal of the
G2 or is it possibly just a bad camera because of the abuse it has
taken being a demo model? I like the camera but hope I can find
some settings to eliminate the shutter lag and the time to write
the picture to the card. (BTW we use a San Disk 128MB and 40MB
cards at home).

Lance
Click to expand...
 
This may very well have been the problem. This was the first time I even looked at a G2 and don't know much about it. I'm used to the Nikon 950 that shows the shot that was taken until it is done writing then switches back to whatever the camera is pointed at. We use the LCD quite a bit and if we have to wait that's certainly not acceptable to me if it can't be turned off. I'm not sure if it can from what you are saying. Can you just turn off the review entirely so it takes the pick and writes to the card and off you go?

Lance
Jojosung said:
I have a few question for you Lance...

When you say 3-4 Sec.. is it the time between one shot to another
shot... persay... you snap one pic, and have to wait 3-4 sec to
snap another one?

If such... here is my theory...

did the camera review set to 2 sec? If it does, it will show the
review for 2 sec!!!, you can't overide this... you have to wait!!!
before you can take another pic.

Since I have a 256mb memory card, and the LCD is too small to use
for examining the pic, I usually just save everything, and do the
deletion on the computer. Thus I change the REVIEW to "Off".

With no preview... you can almost instantanously take the next pic,
since G2 has a buffer that is large enough to store the pic...

Just my 2 cents!!!

Jojosung
Lance Robertson said:
I'm currently trying to decide between a Canon G2 / G3 and Nikon
4500. Most of our pictures are snapshots and point and click type
stuff but we do print out alot of our pictures when we use the
camera on vacation and such. I went to Best buy to look at the G2 /
4500 cameras they had to test them out. The guy gave us a Lexar CF
card that came with the 4500 (saw him take it out of a retail box)
to take pictures with while we were there. The 4500 has a super
slow lag time when the camera is not prefocused (which is what we
want to avoid as most of our pictures are tying to catch my boy
doing something funny) But the G2 has a bit of a lag time too
(although I don't think it was set to continuous focus because it
took a while to focus the camera when we zoomed in on something).
Anyway after taking the picture with the Canon it took what seemed
like 3 or 4 seconds just to write the picture to the card. This
seemed awfully slow. We have a Nikon 950 that we are replacing and
it is fast writing pictures out to the card. Is this normal of the
G2 or is it possibly just a bad camera because of the abuse it has
taken being a demo model? I like the camera but hope I can find
some settings to eliminate the shutter lag and the time to write
the picture to the card. (BTW we use a San Disk 128MB and 40MB
cards at home).

Lance
Click to expand...
Click to expand...
 
yes it can!!! that's what i did to mine...

just go to the menu... set REVIEW to OFF...

Thus the procedure will be - Snap - write (LCD screen go black for about a sec or less) - and you are ready to take the next one...

Note,

I am using Lexar 12x, Transcend, and Sandisk (the original, not Ultra)... they all do it pretty quickly...

Since you do not have a G2 yet...next time you go to Best Buy to play with G2.. Do this -
1. Turn the camera on (in record mode)
2. Hit Menu Button
3. Move the menu down to review (by hitting the down arrow key)

4. Click left or right to adjust the time (most likely you'll click right.. till it says off)
5. Click Menu to go back to recording mode...

Now try it again.. and see if that improve the lag!!!

Cheers
 
If you have an Office Max near you, they are selling the 256meg Lexar 12x card for $99 right now. Compared to the internet prices, it's not a fantastic price, but for retail, it is a great price. I am using this card and see about a 1 second lag MAX, in writing a RAW file on my G2.

To compare, the Lexar is 12x(not all Lexars are 12x so be carefull), but even the fastest Sandisk, the Ultra version, is only 8x I believe.
Lance Robertson said:
I'm currently trying to decide between a Canon G2 / G3 and Nikon
4500. Most of our pictures are snapshots and point and click type
stuff but we do print out alot of our pictures when we use the
camera on vacation and such. I went to Best buy to look at the G2 /
4500 cameras they had to test them out. The guy gave us a Lexar CF
card that came with the 4500 (saw him take it out of a retail box)
to take pictures with while we were there. The 4500 has a super
slow lag time when the camera is not prefocused (which is what we
want to avoid as most of our pictures are tying to catch my boy
doing something funny) But the G2 has a bit of a lag time too
(although I don't think it was set to continuous focus because it
took a while to focus the camera when we zoomed in on something).
Anyway after taking the picture with the Canon it took what seemed
like 3 or 4 seconds just to write the picture to the card. This
seemed awfully slow. We have a Nikon 950 that we are replacing and
it is fast writing pictures out to the card. Is this normal of the
G2 or is it possibly just a bad camera because of the abuse it has
taken being a demo model? I like the camera but hope I can find
some settings to eliminate the shutter lag and the time to write
the picture to the card. (BTW we use a San Disk 128MB and 40MB
cards at home).

Lance
Click to expand...
--
Canon G2 camera
Canon S900 printer
 
See this thread

http://www.dpreview.com/forums/read.asp?forum=1010&message=3794556

I managed to swipe the Lexar 12X card for $80.87 + Tax.. and they deliver in one day!!!

Yes, you don't get the gratification of having the card right away.. but one day and save $20.. that's ain't bad.

Also Lexar 12X comes with Life Time Warranty...

The cheaper brand on the Internet, such as Ridita only have 3yrs warranty...
Chuck_IV said:
If you have an Office Max near you, they are selling the 256meg
Lexar 12x card for $99 right now. Compared to the internet prices,
it's not a fantastic price, but for retail, it is a great price. I
am using this card and see about a 1 second lag MAX, in writing a
RAW file on my G2.

To compare, the Lexar is 12x(not all Lexars are 12x so be
carefull), but even the fastest Sandisk, the Ultra version, is only
8x I believe.
Click to expand...
 
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