D300s memory buffer

[SilverTip Photo]

I shoot with a D300s. The question I have is about the memory buffer. I shoot high school basketball games, use manual mode, shutter speed 1/500 f4, with a 70-200 f2.8, AFC, high speed continous shutter, auto ISO up to 3200, JPEG large-fine. the manual for the camera says I should get 44 shots before the meory is full. The display in the view finder is reporting 12 shots. What, if anything , can I do to change the memory buffer?

 

[MartyD]

The Active D-lightning restricts the buffer capacity. See what happens if Active D-lightning is off. I believe noise reduction does as well.

 

[SilverTip Photo]

Noise reduction is off. Turning Active -lighting off, boosted the buffer to 17.

 

[Thern]

Per Nikon's information "Maximum number of exposures that can be stored in memory buffer at ISO 200. Drops if optimal quality is selected for JPEG compression, ISO sensitivity is set to Hi 0.3 or higher, High ISO NR is on when auto ISO sensitivity control is on or ISO sensitivity is set to 800 or higher, or long exposure noise reduction, Active D-lighting, or image authentication is on.

Back in the days I remember people got better bufferperformance with faster cards so it seems to appear that the buffer is being transfered during the continuous burst mode period, and the faster transfer cards do make a difference.

 

[dabhand16]

Are you writing RAW to one card and the jpgs to the other or writing jpg to both cards to give a backup?

As Thern says faster cards are worth a try. If you can, look at the write speed. Modern cards often show read and write speeds but not so much on older cards. They only showed read (faster) speed usually.

 

[MartyD]

I powered up my D300 today just to see what I could figure out. The biggest impact on the buffer capacity of the D300 is JPEG image quality.
Fine - 21 Normal - 28 Basic - 45
I don't know if the speed of the memory cards helps clear the buffer faster and how fast of a memory card the D300 can take advantage of.

I shoot a ton of HS sports myself or at least I did until last March, if you haven't tried Topaz DeNoise AI give it a trial run.

 

[dabhand16]

I don't know if the speed of the memory cards helps clear the buffer faster and how fast of a memory card the D300 can take advantage of.

I thought this too but even if the camera can't take full advantage of a faster card, it could benefit. Cards are so cheap now. I remember when i got my first digital compact that had 3MP. It came with an 8MB CF card! I knew that that would not be adequate for my forthcomming holiday so got a 128MB card. The cost? 90GBP!!! This was in about 2001/2.

 

[SilverTip Photo]

Thanks for all the replies. I a shooting JPEG to both cards, ysing the CF as a backup. The SD card is a Sanisk 64g 150mb/s. I don't know if that is read or write speed. The CF is also a SanDisk 64g 120mb/s.
Turning off the Active D-lighting had the greatest increase in the buffer capacity.
I use LR Classic for post processing.

 

[MartyD]

I use LR Classic for post processing.

I use Lightroom Classic for processing as well. I export the edited files to JPEGs and then process them using batch mode Topaz DeNoise AI and it does a great job of removing noise. Topaz has a 30 day trial program if you want to give it a try.

 

[SilverTip Photo]

I will give Topaz a try.