Instant buffer warnings and rapid overheating on my 7d

B

BrettR.

Active member
OK, I have a Kingston 16gb 133x Elite Pro card, and sometimes things behave reasonably (not great) when it comes to the buffer warning, and other times I get the warning (which shows up and then maxes out and stops recording in like 2 seconds) within a minute of recording. I do use it for professional applications, so having it do this on a job could be very bad, so so far I've been able to work around it on serious jobs and be ok, for now.

Is this a bad choice in card? Is it a camera issue? Have you found a card for the 7d that doesnt give the buffer warning... nearly ever?

Also I know overheating is a problem with the 7d, but mine happens quickly, even in the shade. I do live in Florida, so I'm sure that doesn't help. Any tips for keeping it cooler, longer?

Thanks.

P.S.- do the 5d mk2's not have this overheating issue?
 
Yes, it's a bad choice in cards. I purchased the 266x and have never had issues. with the 133, it's not constant, but once is too many.
 
Ive had it happen to me about 3-5 times so far (probably 1 out of ever 2-300 shots or so).

Seems to happen more when card is almost full.

I have started changing card as soon as i see the 999 counter on my pictures left going down. (its about 13-14GB or so). This seems to lower the chances, i think ive only had it happen once after starting this method.

For my personal and non-paying films its fine, for $40 it not a bad card at all. But if your getting paid a ton might want to invest in something more.

I think when i get some extra cash i will invest in one faster card, and just use my 2 kingstons as backups. (its only on longer shoots that I use more than 1 card anyway)
 
Yeah.... the Kingstons are OK. I do get the buffer warning fairly often, but only 2x has it shut off shooting. The SanDisks are MUCH BETTER.

I use the cheaper and slower SanDisk Ultra 2 and they work really good. Never a buffer error or any sort.

The Kingston cards feel less reliable, but they are a LOT cheaper. If it's important, I use the SanDisks, for not important stuff or random b-roll, the Kingstons are OK.
 
I have a couple 16 and 32GB Kingston 133's and they work well. I have seen the buffer indicator a couple of times but it hasn't been too much of an issue. I guess for the difference in price, the SanDisk CF Cards are cheap insurance. But they are significantly more expensive.

A couple of things to keep in mind.

You should always format the card in the camera your shooting with, not the computer or even another 7D.

If at all possible reformat before every shoot/project.

The camera is writing a "file system" to the card on a fat32 partition, it does not deal well with fragmented data, it likes to place the data into the file system in contiguous streams. That's why it starts having to buffer as the card fills. If you shoot stills, start and stop a lot, or delete clips trying to conserve space, all of this can fragment the card making it less efficient.

If you do these simple things you shouldn't have any problems with the 133's. Doing this is a good idea even if your using a card faster than 133.

When I'm shooting I shoot about 50 gigs a day and I have not experienced any significant problems.
 
I've only ever had buffer warnings from the Kingston 133's when I've shot stills on the same card and deleted photos as well as shooting video. Never shut down or stopped though. Just make sure to format it a couple of times before every use like Chuck said.
 
ChuckS said:
You should always format the card in the camera your shooting with, not the computer or even another 7D.

If at all possible reformat before every shoot/project.

The camera is writing a "file system" to the card on a fat32 partition, it does not deal well with fragmented data, it likes to place the data into the file system in contiguous streams. That's why it starts having to buffer as the card fills. If you shoot stills, start and stop a lot, or delete clips trying to conserve space, all of this can fragment the card making it less efficient.
Click to expand...

I always format my card in my 7d.

Most of the time, including the time I got a buffer warning within one minute, I re-format right before I start something new.

I had no stills on the card.
 
Do you have faster cards, or at least another 133 you can test with? It would be interesting to know where the problem is.

I'm simply making the point that the 133's are fast enough that you shouldn't be experiencing this problem. I guess its possible that what your experiencing is specific to that card or camera.

I'm not sure what to make of the overheating, I have only had mine overheat a couple of times after shooting all day in direct sunlight and when it did I just ignored it and kept shooting.

What firmware are you running? I have heard that the new firmware greatly reduces the &D's tendency to overheat. I don't know if that's true but it might be worth a try.
 
BrettR. said:
OK,

Also I know overheating is a problem with the 7d, but mine happens quickly, even in the shade. I do live in Florida, so I'm sure that doesn't help. Any tips for keeping it cooler, longer?
Click to expand...

I had a shoot Sunday with a 550D and a 7D. I'm working in Indonesia right now and it's hot and humid. The 550D never overheated, but the 7D got a warning constantly. It was a commercial shoot so both cameras only shot takes less than a minute each time. The 550D was set to power down when Idle for 30 sec but the 7D could only be set to power down after 60 sec. I manually shut off the 7D and the warning went away after a short rest. These cameras all run hot, but if you keep it off when not rolling they should work fine.
 
ChuckS said:
Do you have faster cards, or at least another 133 you can test with? It would be interesting to know where the problem is.

I'm simply making the point that the 133's are fast enough that you shouldn't be experiencing this problem. I guess its possible that what your experiencing is specific to that card or camera.

I'm not sure what to make of the overheating, I have only had mine overheat a couple of times after shooting all day in direct sunlight and when it did I just ignored it and kept shooting.

What firmware are you running? I have heard that the new firmware greatly reduces the &D's tendency to overheat. I don't know if that's true but it might be worth a try.
Click to expand...

I don't have another card, but I will have to soon, I can't deal with this. I'm running whatever ware that it came with about 4 months ago. I didn't upgrade because of the reports of it causing some gnarly banding effects in photos (not sure if video is included with that defect), and that scared me.
 
What speed card is too fast for the camera? I heard some new cards are "too good" for the 7d... anyone know of this?
 
You must log in or register to reply here.
Back
Top