Memory Buffer

The Key to Understanding Burst Rates

Your camera's memory buffer is one of those features that is rarely explained by a salesperson.

That's why it is especially important to understand what it is and how it affects what you can accomplish with your digital camera.

After you "take a picture" by releasing the shutter, the image's data is processed in the camera and then transferred/written to the storage card.

In order to speed up this process and therefore reduce the time between shots, the memory buffer inside your digital camera temporarily holds the data before transferring/writing it to the storage card.

Most digital cameras today have relatively large memory buffers, thereby allowing them to operate as quickly as an older film camera when shooting continuous photos (a.k.a. taking pictures in burst mode).

Buffers can be located in various locations within your camera. There can also be different processing approaches for transferring the data. The key point is to find out what the maximum burst rate is for your camera.

For example, if you take 10 continuous TIFF or RAW photos with your camera, you need to decide if that will be acceptable for the photography you are interested in.

If you want to take large numbers of high quality sports photography shots without a delay, a camera with a maximum burst rate of 10 shots may not be fast enough. On the other hand, for portrait work, it is probably quite acceptable.

Find out if your digital camera's image processing happens while the data is written to the storage card. If it does, then your camera can take new pictures while older ones are being transferred to the storage card.

In this case, you do not necessarily have to wait for the entire burst of frames to be written to the memory card before there is enough room to start another full burst.

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