Nikon D90: Some shots from Formula D '08 - Irwindale

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Nikon D90 - New SD Extreme III 30 MB/s Test

Well I received my Nikon D90 about 2 weeks ago now. I've had plenty of fun with it so far...and in my opinion, it shoots great quality pictures. I was aware that SanDisk had released a new 30 MB/s edition of their Extreme III SD card to go along with this camera. Well mine arrived yesterday and I thought I'd do a little test to get some real world numbers out of it.

I've chosen three SD cards for comparison:

1. SanDisk 4 Gb Extreme III 30 MB/s (Class 6) SD card
2. SanDisk 2 Gb Extreme III 20 MB/s (Class 6) SD card
3. SanDisk 4 Gb SDHC (Class 2) SD card

My test was shooting a simple well lit area of my desk in order to get max fps. All cards were inserted into the D90 then formatted before each test. With the camera set to manual (*no Auto-ISO...I'll get to that later), Continuous High or CH shutter mode, and JPEG Normal, I proceeded to fire off as many shots as possible before the camera buffer appeared to get full and began to slow down the camera's ROF (rate of fire).

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My results, though not exact, give you an idea of where the performance lies in this new 30 MB/s card from SanDisk.

1. SanDisk 4 Gb Extreme III 30 MB/s (Class 6) SD card
Approx. 90-95 shots at 4.5fps (after that it slowed to about 3.5-4fps)

2. SanDisk 2 Gb Extreme III 20 MB/s (Class 6) SD card
Approx. 50 shots at 4.5fps (after that it slowed down to a steady 3-3.5fps)

3. SanDisk 4 Gb SDHC (Class 2) SD card
Approx. 15 shots at 4.5fps (after that it slowed down to a about 1.5-2fps)

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The card didn't offer any kind of speed boost but merely ROF endurance at the camera's fastest continuous speed.

The card did seem to have a slight quicker rate of review when going through pictures in the playback mode. Also the quick review after you take several continuous shots was quicker too, but nothing amazing. But there is one cool thing, let's say you've shot several of continuous shots like 30-50 for some reason, the live review will keep showing you the latest picture that it has written to the card. It takes a long time to catch up and show the preview of the last in the series. Well if you hit the play button or the shutter half way, the quick review ceases. This allows the writing process to the card to finish as fast as possible. After that, just hit the play button again and you're able to immediately flip through all of the photos you just shot...instantly. This would be very good for shooting sports, when you might need to check photos quickly then right away begin shooting again.  Also, the speed when downloading from the camera to a computer using this new SanDisk Extreme III 30 MB/s SD card is incredibly quick compared to the others.  I was able to download 500+ full size jpeg pictures in a 2-3 minutes.

*Now about the Auto-ISO issue. I have found that when you try and shoot in P and A modes with Auto-ISO on, the camera limits the max continuous shots to a burst of 5 shots at 4.5fps. Thats five pictures at the highest ROF then the camera knocks it down to 2 or so FPS from then on. Shutter and Manual modes aren't affected by this flaw, only P and Aperture modes. And all modes work fine with Auto-ISO off (*note: even on manual, it's possible for auto-ISO to still be utilized, if you want full manual control including ISO, you'll have to turn off the auto-ISO feature). I'm still trying to figure this out...I thought that I narrowed it down to whether the auto-ISO had been activated or not. This is determined by the camera. If the shot is going to be underexposed and the shutter speed has to drop below the minimum shutter speed parameter in the ISO sensitivity settings to achieve a proper exposure, only then will it force a change in the ISO settings from where you have set it (i.e. ISO 200) - See below...

But with the settings in the image above, I have not had the issue anymore. Even when auto-ISO is triggered for a particular burst of shots I see no limit in the number shots I can take before the buffer runs out. Go figure...I'm going to keep trying to isolate the issue.  

Night shots

Here are some night shots with my new D90. I'm very happy with it.