Do I need a XQD G series for my style of shooting?

[Randy]

Randy, if everyone says the XQD is faster why don't you make it th eprimary card with overflow going to the cf?

because my desktop has a builtin cf/sd card reader, that's how unimportant an xqd card is to me right now, but the second I think I need one to make my D500 run fast enough I'll buy one.
If I didn't have so many fast enough CF cards before XQD arrived I would have went all XQD, If I order a D5 it will def be all XQD so the technology isn't lost on me, it's the need.

 

[Randy]

With my previous D4/D4S/D3S or current D810/D7200 bodies I have never had the need for such speed or buffer emptying, though I am often in company with people who clearly take 10-15 frames to my 1 or 2 ... I am sometimes amazed at how a small bird remains sitting motionless on a twig through a bombardment of their shutter activations!

I wonder if they actually PP the pics because that alone should break them of a very bad habit. The bursts on static birds IS the most amazing thing to see....

 

[Retief]

I wonder if they actually PP the pics because that alone should break them of a very bad habit. The bursts on static birds IS the most amazing thing to see....

I have caught some very funny and interesting images, such as an owl turning its head around or upside down, that would never have happened had I not shot a burst. I do agree, however, that we need to have brains behind that trigger finger as well. Especially when light is very low and I have to shoot at a slower than ideal shutter speed I will often shoot a 2-3 frame burst and the second shot is often sharper than the first. Not only do I not understand the 10-20 shot bursts of a perched bird, I also don't understand the need to take 1 shot every 5 seconds when the subject simply does not move a all.

 

[Randy]

I have caught some very funny and interesting images, such as an owl turning its head around or upside down, that would never have happened had I not shot a burst. I do agree, however, that we need to have brains behind that trigger finger as well. Especially when light is very low and I have to shoot at a slower than ideal shutter speed I will often shoot a 2-3 frame burst and the second shot is often sharper than the first. Not only do I not understand the 10-20 shot bursts of a perched bird, I also don't understand the need to take 1 shot every 5 seconds when the subject simply does not move a all.

at least a change in something in between....I'll often take a safe shot and eat the iso then back off the ss to lower the iso and take a few more, continuing to drop the ss
but just to fire away at the same thing is weird because it means you have to deal with the files when you get home

 

[Geof]

I have caught some very funny and interesting images, such as an owl turning its head around or upside down, that would never have happened had I not shot a burst. I do agree, however, that we need to have brains behind that trigger finger as well. Especially when light is very low and I have to shoot at a slower than ideal shutter speed I will often shoot a 2-3 frame burst and the second shot is often sharper than the first. Not only do I not understand the 10-20 shot bursts of a perched bird, I also don't understand the need to take 1 shot every 5 seconds when the subject simply does not move a all.

I was shooting some mountain goats in Alaska and along comes a Canon shooter with a nice setup. He's right next to me and he must have left with a thousand images. I swear at the rate he was shooting he'll need a new shutter system in a couple months. Meanwhile I got some nice keeper shots out of the 50 or so I took. I can't imagine he was ever a film shooter.

 

[photogramps]

I can't imagine he was ever a film shooter.

LOL ...

"Hi, what's in your backpack mate, a 600 f4?"
"No mate, it's my supply of film!"

 

[weerterbos]

http://www.mir.com.my/rb/photography/hardwares/classics/nikonf3ver2/databack/mf10.htm#MF2-750
750 pix!

Subscribe to see EXIF info for this image (if available)

 

[photogramps]

I have caught some very funny and interesting images, such as an owl turning its head around or upside down, that would never have happened had I not shot a burst.

Even us slow-mo's get some of those

View attachment 1431930
Kingfisher shaking off the droplets by Roger, on Flickr

View attachment 1431933
Juvenile Sparrowhawk by Roger, on Flickr

 

[Retief]

at least a change in something in between....I'll often take a safe shot and eat the iso then back off the ss to lower the iso and take a few more, continuing to drop the ss
but just to fire away at the same thing is weird because it means you have to deal with the files when you get home

And that is certainly the downside of digital in general, isn't it? I never remember coming home from a day shooting file with 500-1000 shots to worry about

 

[Randy]

And that is certainly the downside of digital in general, isn't it? I never remember coming home from a day shooting file with 500-1000 shots to worry about

I never did film but digital quickly taught me self control on the SB and that was back when we PPed 1 image at a time in NX2

 

[Retief]

Geoff, Roger, Harold and Roger ...

Yup, Yup, Yup and YUP!

 

[Retief]

I never did film but digital quickly taught me self control on the SB and that was back when we PPed 1 image at a time in NX2

With film a lack of "self control" immediately hits you in the wallet. Figure, to make it easy, $10 per 36 frame roll. Our last 3 week trip to Australia I came home with 100 rolls of film. Time to move to digital.

In my "younger days" I did a lot of white water rafting. I met some guides who took a Nat Geo photographer down a really tough, but fun, Class V+ run in California. They told me that this guy had a dry bag full of loaded camera bodies. As one got wet, and ran out of film, he just threw it in another bag and grabbed another camera! Now THAT is the quickest way to change film.

 

[weerterbos]

Ok funny stories...
Like I showed in another tread, I did shoot red deer in a forest near my town. Tripod with 3 part legs, 2 parts out. Manfrotto 393 'swing' head, D300 with 500 P f4 manual focus in Aperture mode, ISO max 400 or 600, Mup, cable remote, let the rig settle after mirror up. I don't like live view in the D300, it's to slow for my patience.
When it was the time of the Rut, loads of people came to visit, there were tours by the owner/nature org. There's a watchtower where visitors gather and there's a field next to a (channeled) stream that's a rutting hot spot. It's next to a dirt road trough the forest. The deer aren't very shy and people usually did behave (keep on the roads/paths rule), no loud sounds, parents keeping their children fairly quiet.
Since those tours usually involved 20 to 40 people, I did help the guides out with answering questions because those really came at Uzi rate. Most guides knew me and know that I visit that forest year round so were glad I did help a little. Of course there were photographers with those tours, mostly 80-300 occasionally 150-500 lenses. They saw a red deer for the first time in their lives, rather close, rather photographer friendly. And then... the shutters went off, sounded like it rained on a tin roof. One was engulfed in spray and prey. Of course, I can understand, it's a once in a lifetime moment for some.
I handed out business-cards with my blog on it. Then fairly often I got mails like: I didn't see you shooting that!!! You were talking to us, your back to the scene...
Well.... I was more talking, teaching, having people looking through my camera, have them look at the camcorder lcd etc etc then shooting indeed. But after a few years of shooting the deer, I knew when to shoot and I did. And indeed, one shot, or in better light a sequence of 3, was all I needed. Plus, because I can get there on my bicycle, I can go when there's no people about so a 'missed' shot wasn't to bad.

 

[Geof]

I was shooting some mountain goats in Alaska and along comes a Canon shooter with a nice setup. He's right next to me and he must have left with a thousand images. I swear at the rate he was shooting he'll need a new shutter system in a couple months. Meanwhile I got some nice keeper shots out of the 50 or so I took. I can't imagine he was ever a film shooter.

http://www.mir.com.my/rb/photography/hardwares/classics/nikonf3ver2/databack/mf10.htm#MF2-750
750 pix!

Subscribe to see EXIF info for this image (if available)

My point wasn't about the quantity of the shots when I made the reference to "not being a film shooter". My point was a film shooter wouldn't have taken several hundred shots of mountain goats all within a few seconds of one another (maybe it's me, but I can't imagine most photographers willing to spend serious coin to process 500 film shots of mountain goats all taken in a 10 second window). These guys were dancing or doing anything extraordinary - they were grazing and moving slowly. But digital has changed the MO. It's so easy now to take 100's of shots of the same subject and just delete all those extra/unnecessary shots. In a 15 minute window I had maybe 50 mountain goat shots while he had to have had well more than several hundreds shots judging by the sound of his shutter mechanism. These goats were barely moving and didn't require that kind of machine gun like shutter firings. Yes, I realize there is a time and place for for taking machine gun like bursts (which is one of the reasons I'm on the D500 preorder list) but in the instance I mentioned it was totally uncalled for. Even worse, one could easily miss a great shot if the buffer is full of images that are basically all the same.

 

[Geof]

Oops...."These guys were dancing" should read "These guys were not dancing".

 

[weerterbos]

I've shot film. Went on scouting summer camps with a Agfa Clack (weekender), with one role of B/W in it. And if my dad shot 4 pictures with it on summer holiday, I would have 4 left. For the whole week!

 

[Geof]

Here's a data point to consider.....in the Nikon D5 review linked to on Nikon Rumors the reviewer states he used a CF card equipped D5 with Sandisk 160MB/s CF cards and was able to obtain 91 shots [paraphrasing]. That's pretty darn decent but obviously the faster XQD cards bring that to 200 according to Nikon. Extrapolating this to a 250MB/S UHS-II card equates to a 142 shot buffer (more or less.....this is a guesstimate). I'd expect similar results with the D500 but we'll have to wait and see if this holds up.

 

[Geof]

Nikon rumors has posted a Lexar speed test for the D5 and D500 cameras. Here are the results for the d500 write speed (number of images is shown by the red bars) and the 2nd image shows how long it takes to transfer data from the card to the computer. Buried in the speed test video are results for writing to CF cards but I did not capture that (it was in the D5 tests since the D500 does not use CF cards).

The numbers are significantly lower than what Nikon is specifying. I'm not 100% sure why but the tests were conducted using 14bit files while nikon likely used 12 bit images. It may also be they did not use Compressed NEF files).

Regardless, the ratios between the various cards, not the absolute total numbers is what I was looking at.

Bill should be happy with his new XQD cards as they are significantly faster than the fastest CF cards in transferring data to the computer.

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View attachment 1435681

 

[weerterbos]

http://www.realhardwarereviews.com/lexar-xqd/ lexar xqd 2933x test, just the card, no relation to d5/d500. Also some info related to CFast (2.0).

 

[Randy]

[rant]
the numbers are almost as crazy as the new ISO limits.
The D4 is too fast, there, I said it. It's hard to fire 1 shot and easy to fire way too many. And remember I use really old Lexar CF cards and Sandisk sd cards. So a buffer of 200 and a burst of 25, or was it 50, is, IMO, crazy.
[/end rant]

p.s. that was really for Bull Bill or is it Bill Bull ?