D800 write to card delay

Hi all,

I'm planning to ask Nikon about the frustrating "slow to write" problem that occurs with the D800.

This typically happens thus:

When you take a shot, an hourglass (timer) appears on the LCD screen. The "card writing" light also lights up.

It can take some time to clear. Taking another shot does not clear it, just extends the waiting time!

I think this is common to most D800s, but it would be great if we can approach Nikon and say that many people are having the same problem. If you own or have used a D800 and either get the problem or don't, please add a post to this thread:)

Many thanks

Adam

As I told you, I had this problem with your camera in the Red Sea. It was v. annoying when waiting for an image to flash up on screen to check your lighting etc.

Alex

Please add me to the list too

Elmer

I had this problem too last week, Adam and I were discussing this today. My camera is at least 6 months newer than Adam’s so unlikely to be part of the same batch.

What cards are being used when this issue arises?

If this problem was widespread across all D800s then we would have heard no end of it on the forums like DPReview. Think about all the fuss they made about the left focus issues of the D800!

So I am guessing it might be related to something we do underwater. The only thing I can think of is using flash? However I had this problem when using both wired and pop-up flash. I can't think of anything else.

I was using the card that is usually in my D4 (32gb Sandisk ExtremePro).

Alex

I don't think it's an underwater issue. It happens with my camera very occasionally topside. I have not noticed any type of pattern. I have one of the first 800's released and then an 800E. Don't think it happens with the E.

This is what I posted about the problem back in July:

it was in fact that D800 that was a little buggy. I did have a recurring problem with the camera. From time to time, after taking a picture, it would take 20-30 seconds for the D800 to show the picture on the LCD screen. It would occur when taking the first picture after the camera had been in active for a while. It could be a bit annoying when you wanted to check exposures/lighting on the first shot in a sequence. But was not of serious consequence. One other D800 owner on board said his camera did this too. Maybe the latest firmware fixes this problem.

64 gb Sandisk Extreme and it is only intermittently, noticed it doing land portraits.

The sporadic waiting time for the image review to start up after depressing the playback button is more annoying.

Hmm,

i don't have this problem, even shooting several images in C shutter mode on land and using a SanDisk Extreme pro 64GB SDXC and a Lexar 800x CF

Please test your cards with a write/read card test program to make sure that you have a original card, and not a rebadged class 2 or 4.

Relabeling is unfortunately a common practice to gain easy money as the price difference between a class 2 and a true class 10

are abyssal and to change the sticker is a easy task.

I just had a long discussion with my camera man and some - non empiric - test done with several SD cards from No-Name to SanDisk and most of them are well below their class rating.

Chris

I didn't have this problem when writing to a 16BD ADATA Class 10 card on a body I rented from Lens Rentals. I had tried to use an older 150x 16GB Compact Flash card and it locked the camera up. So I just shot with the one card and changed more often.

I did see on the Nikonians forum that having a slow card in the other slot can slow the faster card up somehow. I'm not seeing a lot of posts as to general slow writing ther there and those guys shoot a lot. Have you tried an SD card or another CF card?

I just bought a new D800 and will try a few tests to see.

Jack

I don't buy the card explanation - because that doesn't explain why the problem on occurs on rare occasions. Also the write speed is perfectly good most of the time, even when blatting away and then once in while (several hundred photos between incidents) it will take 10-20 seconds to show you the first image you take, even when you only shoot one image. While most of the time it shows the images instantly, even when shooting frame after frame.

Alex

Hmm, I just tried a few ideas out.

Used a new Extreme 32GB 60mb/sec CF card and it was very fast, writing 6 or so RAW shots quite quickly.

Class 10 16GB card was noticeably slower, but still kept up pretty well. I was surprised at the speed difference.

Older Ultra 33 GB/sec CF card was slow - but worked. An older transcend card of about the same speed locked the camera up - beware!

Loading various combos and switching the primary back and forth didn't make any difference.

Note that having the green light on only means that the camera is accessing the card. May be/not actually writing to it.

Hi all,

I am using genuine and fast cards! I have also used a bunch of different cards.

I also get this underwater and topside. It is intermittent though. It is not something that happens on every shoot or day's shooting. It happens when writing to CF or SD cards.

I was assuming that having just taken an image, that the camera would be trying to write to the card. However, It may be doing some other function? This may be what causes the write delay I guess.

Adam

Right, I’m taking mine back tomorrow, I’ll let you know the outcome

We recently updated the firmware on our D800s but still have had this issue a couple of times since. If I am in a hurry, I just pop the battery out a bit to clear the problem. It probably screws up the shot it was writing. Will housings now have a control for opening the battery door and dropping the battery temporarily? (sarcasm alert...)

We recently updated the firmware on our D800s but still have had this issue a couple of times since. If I am in a hurry, I just pop the battery out a bit to clear the problem. It probably screws up the shot it was writing. Will housings now have a control for opening the battery door and dropping the battery temporarily? (sarcasm alert...)

Do you have a firmwareupdate voor your D800? I know about one update but that is only about lensprofiles as far as i can recall.

Anyway, i have the problem with my D800 and my D800E every now and then too. I use Transcend 32 GB cards, but i don't think it matters really which cards you use. Usually i just start the light measurement by pressing the shutterrelease slightly and then i press the 'play' button. Normally i can see the image then.

Udo

Well I had it happen with my D800 one time, using an Extreme Pro 95mb/s. Then I switched to the Lexar 1000x CF and it never happened again, on either the 32, 64 or 128GB. It never took 20 seconds, more like 12 seconds to clear a 4fps sequence. The files were 43+mb RAW + Lrg JPG. Seeing how the fastest card on the D800 only writes at 60+ MB/s to CF (UDMA7) or 22MB/s on the SD (Class 10), I think it's safe to say there is an irregular bug in the camera.

There were all ISO1250 with NR turned off. Never had an issue with video and the SD card either.

For me the problem wasn't about clearing a sequence of shots. It happened when just shooting one shot, which on the rare occassions the problem occurred would take an age to write. Then a minute later you'd blat of 10 shots in a row and no problem.

Alex

I got this problem for the first time on my last trip and it coincided with the battery needing recharging shortly after. Could it be connected to a battery power voltage drop? This was the first ime I attempted to use the same battery for a whole six day dive trip.