[takis63]

Hi all

I need your help.

My K50 seems to have slowed down it's max fps rate.

I was shooting birds with a friend and it was set up at the Hi rate (6 fps) and after about 300 shots it started to shoot at a slower rate, around 4.5 fps. It was still faster than the Lo rate (3 fps) but not as fast as it was before.
Now when i got home, i charged the battery and i reset the camera to default settings but to no avail.

Any thoughts?

Thanks in advance

Panagiotis

[bertwert]

Different SD cards?
Try a faster SD card.

[Na Horuk]

Um, I'm not sure I understand. You got 6fps for 300 shots? That sounds pretty amazing already.
Anyway, after taking a bunch of photos, the buffer will get full and the card will still be writing the previous photos, which will ultimately slow down the speed. But if you give the camera some time to finish writing all the images and flush the buffer, it will be fast once again.
The other thing is that if you have a shutter time that is too slow for 6fps, you will not be able to get 6 fps. For example, if you have an exposure that lasts half of a second, you can not get 6 photos in a second. So shutter speed is the other possible limit.

Some camera settings can also slow down the processing of the photos. Settings like CA removal, distortion correction (especially this one!), diffraction correction, shadow correction; shooting jpeg+raw, and others. Disable all settings, shoot only raw without jpeg.

Finally, the card itself might get slow. I think some cards can slow down if you have a lot of info scattered on them. What you can do to help against this is formatting the SD card in-camera. Of course, every time you do this, you delete all the data/photos on the card. You only do this after you have successfully copied all the files to computer.
Then there are SD card classes; some are faster than others. And not just the class, as even within the same class there are big variations across brands and card generation. Some cards have a fast speed, but slow down quickly; others have a decent sustained speed. I think the fastest Sandisk cards are a good choice. Google to find out which ones that are right now, as new generations are released all the time.

[Imp]

Um, I'm not sure I understand. You got 6fps for 300 shots? That sounds pretty amazing already.

Not 300 shots straight He means after shooting around 300 frames, his max burst rate was noticeably slower when he tried burst mode - am I right?

Try reformating the card, after you've saved all the data on the card

[takis63]

Not 300 shots straight He means after shooting around 300 frames, his max burst rate was noticeably slower when he tried burst mode - am I right?

Try reformating the card, after you've saved all the data on the card

You're right, not 300 shots straight. I shot around 300 frames in a period of about 3 hours.

I will try to format the card in camera. It is a Sandisk Ultra HC1 32GB

[Na Horuk]

Ah, okay.
One more thing I would suggest is to update the camera firmware if you haven't already. The latest update contains all the previous updates. There are PF posts and threads and even youtube videos with instructions, if you need. Firmware can sometimes help with SD card compatibility.
But after you charge the battery and format the card, the camera should be as fast as it used to be.

Hm, one thing is that possibly your expectation changed? You got used to the speed and it now seems normal, even slow? And the shutter thing I mentioned earlier.

[takis63]

Everything is OK now.

After i formatted the card i started shooting but it was the same thing, a slow performance. But when i pointed the camera to a strong light source, things changed and it started performing fast again.
Now as i remember when it started to slow down, it was starting to get dark and in all probability this caused the camera to slow down for an unknown reason
Perhaps high ISO files are way bigger in size than low ISO ones? I don't know.

Bit i am glad it is working OK again

Thank you all for your feedback

Panagiotis

[bertwert]

Now as i remember when it started to slow down, it was starting to get dark and in all probability this caused the camera to slow down for an unknown reason

See what @Na Horuk; said your shutter speeds were too low?

[takis63]

See what @Na Horuk; said your shutter speeds were too low?

No they were not. As i remember it was set @800, iso 3200, f6.3

Perhaps the camera was not focusing fast enough given the low light conditions?

Correction, it was ISO 6400

[starbase218]

Perhaps high ISO files are way bigger in size than low ISO ones? I don't know.

I remember the K-5 applies noise reduction at ISO 3200 or above, even to RAW files. Maybe the same is true for the K-50? If so, this extra processing may reduce the framerate.

edit: this seems to be the case, according to these DXOMark measurements.

[sergysergy]

It sounds like you have some kind of post-processing going on?

[takis63]

I remember the K-5 applies noise reduction at ISO 3200 or above, even to RAW files. Maybe the same is true for the K-50? If so, this extra processing may reduce the framerate.

edit: this seems to be the case, according to these DXOMark measurements.

I think you may be right.

[Adam]

Hi all

I need your help.

My K50 seems to have slowed down it's max fps rate.

I was shooting birds with a friend and it was set up at the Hi rate (6 fps) and after about 300 shots it started to shoot at a slower rate, around 4.5 fps. It was still faster than the Lo rate (3 fps) but not as fast as it was before.
Now when i got home, i charged the battery and i reset the camera to default settings but to no avail.

Any thoughts?

Thanks in advance

Panagiotis

Be sure to disable lens distortion corrections if you have those enabled.

[takis63]

It sounds like you have some kind of post-processing going on?

Maybe you are right. I don't remember if i had high iso NR on or off. But i think it only applies to jpeg files.

[drivangil]

Well, there is another setting that can cause the problem; same thing happened to me with my K50 shooting Ballet. If your camera is set to focus priority (over frame rate) it will not shoot until you have focus confirmation from the camera. Try to set the focus active area to spot (under info menu) and then set the menu (after pushing menu button) in C-13 to FPS priority and in C-12 to Release Priority. That way the camera will shoot immediately after the shutter is fully pressed. Only thing is that you most be carefull to shoot only when your camera has focus confirmation so you don't get blurry pictures.
Hope this helps