Why does my Canon 50D only have a max burst of 8?

Question

I got my Canon 50D over the summer, and it's been absolutely amazing! When I started taking pictures with it, I seem to recall the max burst number being relatively high in the display. However, for quite a while now, it has been saying 8. It seems to take many more pictures than just 8 before the buffer fills up, though. Is there a problem with the firmware? Am I the only one that's come across this problem here? I shoot only JPEG on high quality, no RAW. I also tend to shoot either using Program, aperture priority, shutter priority, or full manual. Other than this "problem," the camera hasn't given me any trouble. Thanks!

Kyle

EDIT: Just for clarification, I can take many more than 8 pictures on max burst. Also, the 8 only shows up on the Program, Av, Tv, and manual modes.

Answer 1

I just looked at my 5DmkII. If I set it to 'RAW' it says I have 13 shots, if I set it to 'RAW+JPEG L' it says I have 8 shots. I imagine that number must depend on what setting you have it on.

This was with a SanDisk Extreme 32GB 60MB/s UDMA card.

http://web.canon.jp/imaging/eosd/eos5dm2/specifications.html

"JPEG Large/Fine: Approx. 78 shots (Approx. 310 shots),
RAW: Approx. 13 shots (Approx. 14 shots),
RAW+JPEG Large/Fine: Approx. 8 shots (Approx. 8 shots)"

After some digging I found similar info for the 50D:

http://www.canon.com/camera-museum/tech/report/200809/table1.html

It shows 60/16/10 for bursts of JPEG/RAW/RAW+JPEG so its odd that yours says 8...

More info from BobAtkins (http://www.bobatkins.com/photography/digital/canon_eos_50D_review_6.html):

So your card must not be UDMA.

Update: From the OP's comment on this answer.

So as it turns out, some settings in the Image menu were not defaulted, and thus in the non-automatic modes, the max burst was lower. The four settings were long exposure noise reduction, high ISO speed noise reduction, highlight tone priority, and auto lighting optimizer. The Canon rep was very helpful!

Answer 2

Let's take a look at in-camera image processing workflow

+--------+              +-----------------+           +-------------+
| sensor |   -------->  | image processor |  ------>  | card buffer |
+--------+              +-----------------+           +-------------+
                                                            |
                                                            |
                                                           \|/

                                                         +-----+
                                                         |      \
                                                         |       |
                                                         | card  |
                                                         |       |
                                                         +-------+

So what happend is that your sensor (and mechanics) get data (with some max speed). Then these images are processed by the image processor and head towards the card. Since card writing speeds are limited, there is a buffer before the card to mitigate that problem.

Before you shoot camera has no idea how fast is the card writing going to go, so the burst size it shows is based on two things:

1. Size of in-camera buffer (fixed)
2. Expected size of one image (depends on your output resolution and quality)

Therefore, you're going to have much higher buffer count for JPEGs that RAWs, because JPEGs are smaller and more of them fit into the memory. If you record RAW+JPEG it's going to be even less files.

If you have a fast card, the actual burst size will be higher than the shown number, because by the time you shoot the last image, the first few might be already written to card, so there's still space for more fast shooting.

You can see this reflected in the counter -- the number goes down as you shoot pictures, and increases again when they are written.

Answer 3

The 50D has a burst rate of 6.3fps up to 90 jpeg's.

In general the reason why you are limited is due to your CF card. If your camera can't empty out it's buffer fast enough, it will have to throttle.

But, the buffer should be able to hold more than 8 jpegs easily.

A couple of things to look at:

• Are you using a reputable branded CF card with a high write-rate?
• What happens when you set the file size to small jpeg and shoot in burst?
• Are you sure you are shooting jpeg, and not raw+jpeg?
• Is the AF kicking in between each shot? What happens if you set your lens to MF?

I would contact Canon and see about warranty service. 8 shots seems really low, even if you had NO CF card installed.

Answer 4

I have noticed that problem yesterday. Then I asked the same question, but today I solved the problem, now I am sharing the answer;

In Custom Functions Settings,

In C.Fn II: Image,

If HIGH ISO NOISE REDUCTION LEVEL SELECTED AS STRONG , we are having this famous 8 !!!

Just try to select another reduction level ...

Answer 5

I think I figured it out on my 60D. I had the same problem. I had changed some settings, one of which is the custom functions, and when I set the high ISO speed noise reduction to "strong" my buffer goes down to 5. But when set it to "standard", my buffer is 56. One thing that I haven't figured out is that on the automatic modes the buffer is over 100. This I cannot explain. Basically I'm backing up what that guy said....

Answer 6

''EDIT: Just for clarification, I can take many more than 8 pictures on max burst. Also, the 8 only shows up on the Program, Av, Tv, and manual modes.

Kyle ''

I have noticed the same today ! It is a completely different question than the targets of the answers above...

I tried with the early type 1 GB CF cards and UDMA 8GB , no difference, ** 8 only shown in certain modes (P,Av,Tv,M) 8 for all size pictures...**

It only changes in modes other than P,Av,Tv,M... with 8GB UDMA 8 changes into 47 for L size...