My camera won't take a lot of consecutive pictures?

When I try to take an pictures consecutively the camera says "busy". Could be a battery or an SD card problem?
Answers

P

Most cameras can take pictures faster than they can write them to the SD card. They have small amounts of internal memory they buffer them in and then once it gets full it writes them to the SD card. Otherwise some picture modes require extra processing, which would also slow down the ability to take consecutive pictures, so you also need to double check your settings.

BriaR

The limit of multiple shots is set by the speed that the camera can save the shots to the memory card. If taking a long series is important then do the following: 1. Be sure you have a high speed memory card - the faster the better 2. Reduce the resolution of the image. Using an 80Mb/sec SD card with picture resolution set to large RAW plus Large jpg, my EOS 70D manages around 7-8 shots before the high speed buffer fills and it slows down. With the same card and resolution small jpg I can take keep the shutter release pressed and keep taking photos until the card fills up or the battery dies.

Frank

When you take a photo with any device whether it be a smartphone, a point and shoot, or a DSLR, the image is first obtained from the sensor, then to device's internal RAM or memory. This random-access memory is designed to only hold temporary data. Meaning if you were to turn the off, all data within the RAM would be lost forever. So the RAM is just a temporary bucket that holds data from which it is transfered to the CPU which converts the raw data into some kind of data file and then transfered to the SD card. All of this storage and conversion and then writing to the SD card takes some amount of time. Not all devices can process or even write data at the same rate. For example, on Nikon's top-end model, the D5, you can shoot 10 frames a second for pretty much until either the battery dies or your SD cards are full. That's how fast that specific camera can process and write data, which is extremely impressive but you'd expect that from a $5,000 DSLR. On the other hand, the $8,000 Pentax 645 digital camera takes several seconds just to write a single file? So what gives? It comes down to the speed of the RAW, because not all RAM can send/receive data at the same rate. But more importantly is the speed of the CPU and GPU within the device itself. The Pentax 645 simply has a much slower processing power than the Nikon D5. But that's okay for the 645 because it's not designed for sports like the D5 is. So the customer who's taking landscapes really doesn't care, but the professional sports photographer using the D5, does care --- A LOT! In your case, the camera was designed with a specific user in mind. And from the mfg's point of view, that user or customer simply doesn't care about fast consecutive shooting all that much. But now you are discovering that you do care. So it's now time for an upgrades to a better camera or probably to a better type of camera such as mirrorless or a DSLR. All DSLRs can shoot at least 5 fps, with some shooting more than 10 fps. Some mirrorless cameras can shoot at a blazing 20 fps. Considering that 4x video produces 8MP frames 30 times a second, still photos are beginning to be obsolete. Why take a single shot, or consecutive shots at 5 or 10 fps and "hope" you got the shot, when you can just shoot at 30, 60 or 120 fps at 4K and then pick the absolute best shot that was made at the best moment? Once 8K video becomes commonplace, I think still photography will be dead for the consumer market at the very least.

Forty Licks

Set it to sports mode

keerok

That is perfectly normal. If you wanted continuous shooting, use a video camera (camcorder).

Barry

Battery. Put fresh Duracells in.

Max Hoopla

We are so sorry for you.