1DX Mark II buffer?

[GuyF]

Whilst the 6mins at 14fps is impressive, the original text from the page I linked to didn't give the whole story. In the full review it states, "...the lens cap remained on (insuring a black file and the smallest file size) and a freshly-formatted fast memory card was loaded...".

Don't know what size an essentially "blank" image is but you'd have thought if The Digital Picture goes to the lengths it does to show image quality and noise etc., it would have checked out the buffer with real-world data, i.e. images of something rather than "nothing".

Oh well, guess you can't have everything....

 

[tpatana]

Whilst the 6mins at 14fps is impressive, the original text from the page I linked to didn't give the whole story. In the full review it states, "...the lens cap remained on (insuring a black file and the smallest file size) and a freshly-formatted fast memory card was loaded...".

Don't know what size an essentially "blank" image is but you'd have thought if The Digital Picture goes to the lengths it does to show image quality and noise etc., it would have checked out the buffer with real-world data, i.e. images of something rather than "nothing".

Oh well, guess you can't have everything....

Right. I did bit more real-world test myself (Mk1). Shooting boring wall at my office with setting: 1/200 F5.0 ISO400, and press shutter button down for 30 seconds.

On Lexar 1066x, 1DX took 171 pictures, 5D3 took 137 and 7D(1) took 120.

On crappy Patriot 266x card, same cameras: 59, 31, 45

 

[dcm]

So I was really excited for the 170 image raw buffer. But my camera only shows 59 shots as the remaining shots with the included Cfast 64gb card. I also tried removing the CF card and still is the same.

Speaking of CF card, I have a Sandisk Extreme Pro 64GB UDMA7 card and that only shows 59 shots as well. In the manual it says 59 shots for Standard and 73 for Highspeed/UDMA7.

Is anyone seeing low buffer counts?

Don;t have a 1Dx II yet, but based upon my experience with the 1Dx I believe that the 170 buffer = internal buffer of 59 shots plus while this is happening the buffer will be written to the Cfast card so more shoots can be occur. In the end there will be 59 shoots in the buffer and 111 shots written to the card when the camera slows down.

At some lower FPS the buffer will either be infinite or much larger. I wish Canon would report the maximum burst rate at 10 FPS, 11 FPS, 12 FPS as well as at 14 FPS.

A reasonable guesstimate for shots written to the card would be S=111*14/F where S is the number of shots and F is the selected FPS assuming comparable bandwidth from the buffer to card at all rates. At 10 FPS this would be 155 shots on the card plus the 59 in the buffer or 21.4 seconds before a lag. YMMV

 

[dcm]

So I was really excited for the 170 image raw buffer. But my camera only shows 59 shots as the remaining shots with the included Cfast 64gb card. I also tried removing the CF card and still is the same.

Speaking of CF card, I have a Sandisk Extreme Pro 64GB UDMA7 card and that only shows 59 shots as well. In the manual it says 59 shots for Standard and 73 for Highspeed/UDMA7.

Is anyone seeing low buffer counts?

Don;t have a 1Dx II yet, but based upon my experience with the 1Dx I believe that the 170 buffer = internal buffer of 59 shots plus while this is happening the buffer will be written to the Cfast card so more shoots can be occur. In the end there will be 59 shoots in the buffer and 111 shots written to the card when the camera slows down.

At some lower FPS the buffer will either be infinite or much larger. I wish Canon would report the maximum burst rate at 10 FPS, 11 FPS, 12 FPS as well as at 14 FPS.

A reasonable guesstimate for shots written to the card would be S=111*14/F where S is the number of shots and F is the selected FPS assuming comparable bandwidth from the buffer to card at all rates. At 10 FPS this would be 155 shots on the card plus the 59 in the buffer or 21.4 seconds before a lag. YMMV

I should have called that a reasonable lower limit guesstimate since it didn't account for any overlap/pipelining.

My second CFast card arrived so I gathered some empirical data. Wasn't sure of the test shooting conditions for the spec so I set the camera up for minimal processing: high speed at 10fps (I'd already set this for my use), 40 STM in manual focus (it was already mounted with lens cap on ;-), white balance K 5500, eval metering, 1/2000, f2.8, ISO 100, ALO/... off, and CFast card only. I reformatted the card and reset the file counter between tests to simplify tallying the results.

The first test with RAW+L (forgot to turn off jpg) clicked off 728 frames (13 GB) before I though I heard a hesitation. Card showed 10fps the whole time with no dropped frames, so it might have gone longer if I held the shutter button down.

The second test with RAW only clicked off 1806 frames (31 GB) before I stopped - 3 minutes worth at 10fps. I was surprised that it took some effort to hold the shutter button down that long.

YMMV. Of course, nobody actually shoots that way. You would likely turn on AI servo, linked metering, etc. which takes some processing power and might affect the results. Someone else can experiment with settings and other FPS.

This is not something that I'd expect to do much in practice, but its nice to know its possible. I've done something similar with the M3 a few times to capture a long sequence of images. In JPG only mode you can shoot 4+ FPS until the card is full on the M3.

 

[PureClassA]

I had the DX2 all weekend for a shoot and had the same buffer counter of 50 something in the viewfinder. I was using a fast CF card, but NOT a CFast 2.0 and I was shooting mostly in the upper ISOs, so RAW file sizes are bigger. ISO 100, you should have 20-21MB per frame, whereas at 6400 I was getting 24MB+ shots. I'm sure that also accounted for some variance, although I was pretty happy with what I was getting. I didn't have too many slow downs but I was also shooting in very rough lighting and fast action tracking conditions.

 

[RGF]

The second test with RAW only clicked off 1806 frames (31 GB) before I stopped - 3 minutes worth at 10fps. I was surprised that it took some effort to hold the shutter button down that long.

Sounds like at 10 FPS is the write speed to the card. Or very close to it.

 

[StudentOfLight]

So I was really excited for the 170 image raw buffer. But my camera only shows 59 shots as the remaining shots with the included Cfast 64gb card. I also tried removing the CF card and still is the same.

Speaking of CF card, I have a Sandisk Extreme Pro 64GB UDMA7 card and that only shows 59 shots as well. In the manual it says 59 shots for Standard and 73 for Highspeed/UDMA7.

Is anyone seeing low buffer counts?

Don;t have a 1Dx II yet, but based upon my experience with the 1Dx I believe that the 170 buffer = internal buffer of 59 shots plus while this is happening the buffer will be written to the Cfast card so more shoots can be occur. In the end there will be 59 shoots in the buffer and 111 shots written to the card when the camera slows down.

At some lower FPS the buffer will either be infinite or much larger. I wish Canon would report the maximum burst rate at 10 FPS, 11 FPS, 12 FPS as well as at 14 FPS.

A reasonable guesstimate for shots written to the card would be S=111*14/F where S is the number of shots and F is the selected FPS assuming comparable bandwidth from the buffer to card at all rates. At 10 FPS this would be 155 shots on the card plus the 59 in the buffer or 21.4 seconds before a lag. YMMV

I should have called that a reasonable lower limit guesstimate since it didn't account for any overlap/pipelining.

My second CFast card arrived so I gathered some empirical data. Wasn't sure of the test shooting conditions for the spec so I set the camera up for minimal processing: high speed at 10fps (I'd already set this for my use), 40 STM in manual focus (it was already mounted with lens cap on ;-), white balance K 5500, eval metering, 1/2000, f2.8, ISO 100, ALO/... off, and CFast card only. I reformatted the card and reset the file counter between tests to simplify tallying the results.

The first test with RAW+L (forgot to turn off jpg) clicked off 728 frames (13 GB) before I though I heard a hesitation. Card showed 10fps the whole time with no dropped frames, so it might have gone longer if I held the shutter button down.

The second test with RAW only clicked off 1806 frames (31 GB) before I stopped - 3 minutes worth at 10fps. I was surprised that it took some effort to hold the shutter button down that long.

YMMV. Of course, nobody actually shoots that way. You would likely turn on AI servo, linked metering, etc. which takes some processing power and might affect the results. Someone else can experiment with settings and other FPS.

This is not something that I'd expect to do much in practice, but its nice to know its possible. I've done something similar with the M3 a few times to capture a long sequence of images. In JPG only mode you can shoot 4+ FPS until the card is full on the M3.

Wow, you've gone way beyond what anyone could expect over the internet. Gosh, if it were my camera I would have called it a day at 400shots. I applaud you for your commitment to methodology.