Help with D850 Buffer Issue?

[tigger4t]

I wonder if what your trying to achieve or expect is worth the effort,
Your wanting better buffer, faster auto focus i assume from what i am reading, and to know if the D850 you have is defective or not.

The D850 like any other camera is only a tool that fits a purpose for what it was designed for.

If you have the slightest concern about the D850 you have on loan take it back and get another one.

If the same lack of expectations exist then there are several possibilities to consider

1) use the best possible CF EXPRESS card you can afford
2) make certain the camera is formatted and set up optimally, especially with focus and release settings that can adversely effect focus speed and frame rates.
3) question your technique and what objective you have in mind and how the D850 tool fits that purpose.

Or get a genuine grip and use the D5 D6 Z9 battery for that boosted responsiveness in focusing attack speed and increased frame rate.

4) ask your self about your set up , your technique, what your doing, and if its all correct, then ask if the the D850 is the right tool.

I find the D850 flawless used and set up properly, i use it with out the grip and with the Grip, with the grip i use a D5 D6 Z9 battery, a CF Express card, in my case the Cobalt only because i have them from the Z9, i do find with the grip on the D850 the focusing attack speed seems slightly more responsive, the frame rate is faster, the buffer exceeds all my expectations for that tool and i never clog up in the buffer even in raw Lossless compressed HC 9FPS because i don't with my technique spray and shoot endlessly, also that's not what the the D850 was designed to do, the D850 does respectfully meets all my expectations wildly, i have zero issues buffer speed or focusing.

With the D850 I do birds in flight, wild life, sports action like soccer, surfing, rodeo, basket ball etc.
The right glass can also effect performance as we know.

If the D850 doesn't do what you want it to do and you have accessed your self first as doing all things correctly and your using the optimal card then you have the wrong tool.

If i need super fast focus attack speed with a series of demanding repetitive HC burst after burst then I use a D4s D5 D6, if i need that demanding performance at 45mp raw Lossless then i use a Z9, as its the right tool.

I give all these tools the right cards, settings and GLASS to match the APPLICATION as i do equally the D850......Happy Days no issues what so ever.

Again I find the D850 is brilliantly capable as an all rounder do everything well tool, i have even replaced my D4s and D5 with 2 x D850 units, one recently sold as i now have the Z9.

If i find the D850 doesn't meet the needs in an application which is rare, its not the cameras fault, its mine because i am expecting something from a tool it wasn't meant to do.

We can analyze, search, question, compare and overthink or over complicate the situation till the sun sets, its all horses for courses.

Example: I mean i like the Z9 20 fps 45mp good tracking, but gee i still love the D6 as its a different tool that for me in low light super fast indoor sports action or in very challenging conditions the D6 focus attack, tracking and stickiness simply is better than mirror less in any brand, now its a tool that i find fits better for that purpose yet that doesn't take away from the Z9 or other mirror less brands, the Z9 it offers other benefits like 20 30 fps 45mp etc, excellent video, i respect a tool for what it was designed to do, and the D850 is the best DSLR Nikon has ever made, used properly.

Only an opinion

That doesn't answer my question in any way of course - like I said, I needed two numbers based on members' practical experiences of the D850 to determine whether what I was seeing was to be expected. I now have thanks to the more practically minded among us.

 

[tigger4t]

The virtues of the D850 are many.........but buffer wasn't one of them. Image quality, features, focus/tracking just a bit below the D5.....etc.

Go shoot the thing and enjoy it! LOL!

Thanks - that's perhaps the best advice of all knowing that my D850 is behaving as expected and I'm off to the coast this weekend to do just that

 

[Bennvdm]

Did you test the buffer with image review turned off. If on, it reduces the buffer by around 40%

 

[O]

That doesn't answer my question in any way of course - like I said, I needed two numbers based on members' practical experiences of the D850 to determine whether what I was seeing was to be expected. I now have thanks to the more practically minded among us.

Glad your all sorted, have a great trip, and enjoy your wonderful D850

 

[tigger4t]

After a few outings with my D850 I haven't yet had the camera slow down during a burst even at 9fps so all good here and thanks for the reassurances received from members. Also, my Angelbird 512Gb CFExpress SE card (800 Mb/s) is more than enough for a day's shooting, doesn't get hot, is reasonably priced and can receive firmware upgrades using the Angelbird card reader (although mine was delivered with the right firmware for use in the D850).

I did however finally get a response from Nikon Support to the following question which I share out of interest:

"It would however be good to know the Maximum Write Speed of the camera so that I do not waste money on trying to get faster cards. I am currently using a card with an 800 Mb/s write speed but others are available up to 1400 Mb/s but I have no idea whether it would be worth the expense."

The Nikon response (any typos are theirs) was:

"we have researched and reached a point where we can definitely say the Product test taken in 2017 with the XQD 64 GO with 440 MB/s is the limit the D850 reaches.

It will indeed be easier to transfer them to the computer, but the buffer will be full after the same amount of pictures (50/52 RAW files).
We do not have CF express card to test, unfortunately. But you can be sure the information on the manual is correct, and the write limit can be taken from the chart ."

To me this either says that (a) the maximum D850 hardware transfer rate is 440 Mb/s and by inference, buying faster cards is a waste of money or possibly (b) that the D850 simply reached 440Mb/s in their tests. Nikon's comment about the only benefit of my 800 Mb/s card being computer transfer rates suggests (a) to me though.

I don't plan on pursuing it any further with Nikon but thought it might be of interest to other members.

But . . . . . . I did however reply "So in conclusion, there is no in-camera benefit of using cards faster than 440 Mb/s" to which Nikon replied "we can confirm that".

 

[osovitskiy]

Set at Large Lossless 14bit RAW with an Angelbird 512Gb CFE card writing at 850 Mb/s I am still only seeing a buffer size of 20 shots with the D850 slowing down after about 32 shots.

So you are telling that your burst sequence is 32 shots on D850. Did you try the same test with other brands?
I'm looking to buy 512GB Angelbird CFE-B SE card to use with my D850.
The price is like for Sandisk 256GB. But I'm concerned about the speed.
I see buffer tests of Angelbird with Z9 on youtube and they are outstanding, Z9 never hits the buffer limit. I can't find similar test with D850.
I presently have Sandisk CFE-B 128GB and with this card I consistently get 51 RAW 14-bits shots @ 7 fps and 171 RAW 12-bits shots @ 7 fps.
I wonder should I go with 512Gb Angelbird (+their reader to update FW) or 256GB Sandisk for the same money.

 

[tigger4t]

So you are telling that your burst sequence is 32 shots on D850. Did you try the same test with other brands?
I'm looking to buy 512GB Angelbird CFE-B SE card to use with my D850.
The price is like for Sandisk 256GB. But I'm concerned about the speed.
I see buffer tests of Angelbird with Z9 on youtube and they are outstanding, Z9 never hits the buffer limit. I can't find similar test with D850.
I presently have Sandisk CFE-B 128GB and with this card I consistently get 51 RAW 14-bits shots @ 7 fps and 171 RAW 12-bits shots @ 7 fps.
I wonder should I go with 512Gb Angelbird (+their reader to update FW) or 256GB Sandisk for the same money.

I haven't tested any other brands but having heeded all of the good shooting advice given by other members I have not yet had the D850 slow down on me when shooting a burst with the 512 Gb Angelbird SE card. I will probably buy a backup Angelbird CFE card before my next big trip but that would only be guarding against damage or loss. The reader is a very solid piece of kit but I have not yet had to update the firmware on the card as my card came with the latest version. The 512Gb SE card is very good value for money even if there is a compromise on theoretical speed - you can also look at the 'B-Stock' on the Angelbird website where there are even better deals on cards that have been used for demos and exhibitions. At the moment they don't ship direct to the UK because of Brexit issues but they are working on a solution. I hope that this helps.

 

[osovitskiy]

I have not yet had the D850 slow down on me when shooting a burst with the 512 Gb Angelbird SE card

Could you please provide more information? Do you mean that with Angelbird SE the buffer on D850 is unlimited?
I saw this behavior with Z9 (never slows down):

 

[tigger4t]

Could you please provide more information? Do you mean that with Angelbird SE the buffer on D850 is unlimited?
I saw this behavior with Z9 (never slows down):

No, that is not what I am saying - in my experience, in testing the shooting rate slows after about 32 frames but in the field I have not found this to be a problem so far as I typically shoot in bursts of 2 or 3 seconds at most - so 18 to 27 frames in total. I have not had to do any more testing as I am happy with the solution that I have. I hope that this helps - or at least makes it clearer.

If you read some of the other posts, one member comments that a deep buffer is not one of the D850's strengths but also made the excellent point that I should stop worrying about what the D850 can and can't do and just get out there and use it.

That was probably the best advice of all and I've had some good results with my D850 and Sigma 500mm f4 setup.

 

[osovitskiy]

in my experience, in testing the shooting rate slows after about 32 frames but in the field I have not found this to be a problem so far

OK, let's calculate. The D850 buffer is claimed (*) to be 900 MB (but in reality, it looks like it is 1100 MB) and CFe interface speed is max = 270 MB/s. For the fastest available card (Sandisk Extreme PRO) which meets the specs from Nikon we have this:

I shoot rodeo and 7 sec is not enough for me, bronc riding / bull riding is at least 8 sec, maybe more. So I at least go down RAW 12-bit instead of 14 (I can't see the difference anyway), or I have to slow down FPS. What we have have with Angelbird, seems the speed is limited to 180 MB/s, in that case, my calculations show:

If I go down to 12-bit RAW I have a little bit more than 8 seconds. But if I go down 6 fps instead of 7 + 12-bit instead of 14, here is what I get:

12 sec is not a bad length. But investing into a high speed camera and not being able to profit from this.... I think I will go with Sandisk 256 GB instead of Angelbird 512G.

Of course, there are many situations where you don't need the long bursts and high speeds, not every day you shoot the motocross, rodeo, or sport. There are also landscapes, forests and flowers to be shot. So it makes total sense to have 512 GB card for long road trips, but definitely, there should be a fast card for sport/action type of work.

(*) I conclude that buffer size of 900 MB based on the fact that when shooting RAW 14-bit (average size 60 MB) the displayed buffer is r015. 15 x 60 = 900 MB.
When I chose RAW 12-bit (average size is 45 MB) the displayed buffer is r020. 20 x 45 = 900 MB.
I guess this is a conservative estimation, in real life it is a little bit more, depends on the scenery, ISO, shutter speed, resizing (L,M,S) etc.

 

[osovitskiy]

Just wanted to add situation about SD cards. It seems that UHS-I cards (rated at 95 MB/s) have real write speed in D850 around 75 MB/s and here what we get with UHS-I cards:

While UHS-II SD cards claimed to be 300 MB/s in reality barely reach 140 MB/s in the camera, so here is what we get:

Sandisk cards rated at 200 MB/s, in reality, provide up to 104 MB/s write speed in ideal conditions with the HW which support this frequency trick, but in D850 they still behave like ordinary UHS-I cards rated at 95 MB/s but reaching only 75 MB/s.

Sandisk SD UHS-I 256 GB (rated 200MB/s) = $42 and it gives you 22 shots RAW 14-bit @ 7fps
Sandisk SD UHS-II 256 GB (rated 300MB/s) = $135 and it gives you 28 shots RAW 14-bit @ 7fps

Would I pay 3 times more to get extra 6 shots or to get 2-3 times more space? With SD I would go for space.
Because you shoot action on CFe card and when run out of space we can copy all pictures from CFe to SD (inside the camera) and continue shooting action 5-10 min later.

So my budget configuration would be the fastest CFe card I can get + the biggest SD card I can afford =)

 

[osovitskiy]

I asked Angelbird about the performance of their SE card on D850:


My request:

I have Nikon D850 with the latest FW 1.21 and I'm planning to buy a bigger CFExpress type B card. I'm looking at 512GB AV PRO CFexpress SE. The price and specs are very impressive and this card is marked as recommended for D850.
I have a specific question - did you try to run the 7 fps burst of 14-bits RAW with D850 on this card? How many shots do you get before the buffer overflows and the camera slows down?
Does it meet the Nikon specification 51 shots of 14-bit RAW @ 7 fps?



Their response:

Thank you for reaching out for us and sorry for the late reply.
I was talking about your question with our tech team as well as our camera specialist.

According to both, the SE should easily manage the 51 shots of 14-bit RAW @ 7 fps.
All our cards, which are listed in our compatibility list are tested with the highest settings of the according cameras and can support those.

So you can feel free to give the cards a try, if you so wish.
Please tell us, if you need any further assistance from our side.

All the best
Your Angelbird team / Larissa

----------
I feel like I have to try this card myself (maybe in a local store which has them) or order on Amazon and return if it doesn't meet the specs. Not sure if I can return open box memory card.

 

[MartyD]

OK, let's calculate. The D850 buffer is claimed (*) to be 900 MB (but in reality, it looks like it is 1100 MB) and CFe interface speed is max = 270 MB/s. For the fastest available card (Sandisk Extreme PRO) which meets the specs from Nikon we have this:

What has disappointed me about the SanDisk CFExpress cards is that they don't publish sustained write speed while many of the other card manufacturers do.

 

[osovitskiy]

What has disappointed me about the SanDisk CFExpress cards is that they don't publish sustained write speed while many of the other card manufacturers do.

What does it change if the card sustained speed is 800 MB/s but the camera is capable only of 270? It will be limited to 270 regardless of the fast and super fast cards.
The only time you will see difference is when the card sustained speed is less than supported by camera (e.g. 150 MB/s)