poor battery connection and delay in consecutive shutter clicks

[jayandlis]

My Canon Mark iii keeps getting a delay between shutter clicks when shooting in continuous mode. It seems like it may not be getting full power from the battery but I have replaced the battery as well as the SD card but that doesn't make a difference. It doesn't do it all the time but will take a few rounds continuous shooting then revert to this slow odd click noise for each shutter. Any idea's what may be going on? It's only a few months old and I really don't feel like trying to get it fixed through the warranty.

 

[Loswr]

After how many shots? Shooting RAW or JPG? The buffer of the 5DIII isn't all that deep, and if you're writing RAW to the SD (vs. the CF) that slows it down even more.

Other settings, like high ISO NR and focus priority, can also drop your burst rate.

 

[Skulker]

Sounds just like a full buffer.

As well as what neuro said. All cards are not equal, there is quite a variation in write speed. That will slow things up as well.

 

[Loswr]

Also, what do you mean by a 'slow odd click'? My 1D X has such a deep buffer that I don't usually fill it, but when shooting with the 7D and 5DII, once the buffer was full the overall fps dropped but also the subsequent shots were taken in pairs - click-click-pause-click-click-pause-etc.

 

[Mt Spokane Photography]

Also, what do you mean by a 'slow odd click'? My 1D X has such a deep buffer that I don't usually fill it, but when shooting with the 7D and 5DII, once the buffer was full the overall fps dropped but also the subsequent shots were taken in pairs - click-click-pause-click-click-pause-etc.

Yes, and using a SD card would make it worse. Unfortunately, people do not understand the SD hype on specifications and buy the "95" MB/sec SD cards only to find they get 10MB/sec write times.
The cheapest CF cards are faster.

 

[Drizzt321]

Also, what do you mean by a 'slow odd click'? My 1D X has such a deep buffer that I don't usually fill it, but when shooting with the 7D and 5DII, once the buffer was full the overall fps dropped but also the subsequent shots were taken in pairs - click-click-pause-click-click-pause-etc.

Yes, and using a SD card would make it worse. Unfortunately, people do not understand the SD hype on specifications and buy the "95" MB/sec SD cards only to find they get 10MB/sec write times.
The cheapest CF cards are faster.

Especially if you get ones that are UDMA7, even if they aren't 1000x or anywhere close. Reason is that the UDMA7 spec includes support for the TRIM command, which means the camera can tell the card when a file has been deleted, so it can go ahead and clear out those flash blocks ahead of time, instead of at the time you are going to be writing to it. This can drastically improve write times if the CF controller manages things properly.

 

[BozillaNZ]

1. Shoot good CF card

2. Shoot S-JPG

Problem solved! As other's said, you hit wall on the buffer.

And it's not a poor battery connection. What happens when you have poor battery connection? When you press shutter, it does nothing, all LCD disappears, then camera reboots giving you ERR-03 or ERR-99. I've seen this many times but only in old camera which the battery is dying.

 

[dgatwood]

Especially if you get ones that are UDMA7, even if they aren't 1000x or anywhere close. Reason is that the UDMA7 spec includes support for the TRIM command, which means the camera can tell the card when a file has been deleted, so it can go ahead and clear out those flash blocks ahead of time, instead of at the time you are going to be writing to it. This can drastically improve write times if the CF controller manages things properly.

That's easily worked around. Don't delete large numbers of photos on the camera, and after you've filled a flash card, write ones across every bit in every block, then format it. A flash cell must be erased and rewritten only when bits go from 0 to 1, not when they go from 1 to 0, so your computer will take the performance hit of erasing all those cells when you write 1s across every bit, and you won't have to wait for them to be erased while you're shooting photographs.

Of course, to do this efficiently, you'll need to know the flash page size so you can stomp an entire page in a single write operation. Otherwise, you'll waste erase cycles unnecessarily.

There should be tools out there to do this already. If not, you can probably write one in about ten lines of C.