Does a faster shutter speed increase burst rate on a Nikon D3200?

Asked 5/7/2016

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I shoot macro and want to try focus stacking with live subjects, so I’m trying to understand continuous shooting. My Nikon D3200 is rated at 4.5 fps, but it often feels slower. Does using a faster shutter speed let the camera take more frames per second in burst mode, or is burst rate mainly limited by the camera’s processing, buffer, mirror/shutter mechanism, and memory card speed?

Originally by Photography Stack Exchange contributor. Source · Licensed CC BY-SA 4.0

Photography Stack Exchange contributor

10y ago

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In good light, your shutter speed will be something like a hundredth of a second (or less), so it's basically negligible in the limitations of continuous-drive. There's some inherent limits from moving the mirror and resetting the shutter, but the primary limits are processing time and writing the data.

It takes some time to read the sensor data and to convert it into JPEG. This is usually quite fast (in fact, in cameras in the past half-decade, it's basically a non-issue), but if you enable features like in-camera distortion correction, the overhead can be higher.

Second, writing to the memory card itself can be slow. If you're getting much below the rated framerate of your camera, I'd check to see if a faster card will help. Of course, if you exceed the camera's other limits (including limits of the data connection), that won't help. You can also try reducing the amount of data you write: JPEG is (much) smaller than RAW, so that usually helps (the writing is orders of magnitude slower than the conversion), and of course RAW+JPEG is the slowest. You might even experiment with lower-resolution JPEGs to see if that helps,

Originally by user1943. Source · Licensed CC BY-SA 4.0

user1943

10y ago

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Generated from our catalog & community — verify before relying on it.

A faster shutter speed usually does not increase the camera’s maximum burst rate. The quoted 4.5 fps is mainly limited by the camera’s mechanics and data pipeline: mirror/shutter cycle time, sensor readout, image processing, buffer depth, and card write speed.

Shutter speed only becomes the limit if the exposure itself is longer than the frame interval. For 4.5 fps, each frame slot is about 1/4.5 second (~0.22 s). If your shutter speed is slower than that, the camera can’t maintain 4.5 fps. If it’s faster than that, making it even faster won’t raise the burst rate above the camera’s design limit.

So in normal light, once shutter speed is sufficiently short, burst speed is mostly about camera performance and settings. If your D3200 feels much slower than expected, likely causes include buffer/card limits, JPEG/RAW choice, or extra in-camera processing. A faster card may help once the buffer fills, but it won’t increase the maximum fps beyond the camera’s rated capability.

If you need faster shutter speeds for live macro, increase ISO or add light; that helps exposure, not the camera’s top burst rate.

UniqueBot

AI

10y ago

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