Be Careful How You Set The Function Of Slot 2

I asked about this in another thread, but I've since done some investigation and come to the bottom of what I see as a flaw in the firmware of Nikons with 2 SD slots. I did some internet searching and I could not find anything on this specifically other than to give a recommended setting for the Role menu option. So I thought I'd share it with everyone here.

The issue at hand has everything to do with how you set the Role of Slot 2 in the Shooting Menu. When you set the Role of Slot 2 to RAW Slot 1 - JPEG Slot 2 it can take up to 5 times as long to clear the buffer as it does when you set it to Overflow, even when you're only shooting RAW!!! In other words, if I'm shooting RAW only, but have the Slot 2 set to receive JPEG's, the camera acts as if I am shooting JPEGs and changes the amount of processing horsepower available to clear the buffer into slot 1.

I noticed this when I was shooting a concert with my D610 the other night and had an EyeFi card in slot 2 in case I wanted to upload anything to Facebook during the show. I quickly changed my mind about that and reset my Shooting Menu option to RAW Only but did not change the Role of Slot 2 option just in case I wanted to shoot JPEG later in the night. I was shooting in Qc mode (3 fps) and after firing off a couple quick series I noticed that my camera would now only shoot 1 image and stop, and the shots remaining display in my viewfinder was slowly going back and forth between R00 and R01. It took almost 45 seconds for it to clear the buffer into a 92Mbps card!! When I changed the role of slot 2 back to Overflow everything cleared quickly.

So, when I got home I ran some tests to get to the bottom of it and it seems that on all my two-SD slot cameras, when Slot 2 is set to receive JPEGs and the camera is set to shoot RAW Only, the buffer takes up to 5 times longer to clear than when it's set to Overflow. But, if you remove the second card, it ignores the Slot 2 function setting and returns to the same rate. Don't believe me?


This was the same with my D610, D600, D7100 and D7000.

So, if you're going to be doing a lot of continuous shooting, be careful how you have Slot 2 set in your menus.

One night while taking photos of the theater students, I noticed it took a while for the images to get written to the card. I had the camera set to RAW+jpeg fine. I wasn't even shooting in continuous although I was taking some photos in quick succession. And when my D600 was returned from being serviced, I tried shooting in continuous with RAW+jpeg fine just to fire off 300 photos for checking the shutter. :hopelessness: I remember it taking forever so I switched it to jpeg basic for the speed. Since I don't normally shoot in continuous or even in quick succession, I thought it was the way the camera worked.

How does it affect the rate when the second slot is set as RAW backup? Is it any better?

hark said:

How does it affect the rate when the second slot is set as RAW backup? Is it any better?

Click to expand...

My understanding is that Backup mode is the same as RAW 1 - JPEG 2 in terms of splitting processing power and can bring the camera to a crawl since it's actually writing to both cards.

When I do shoot JPEG it's for immediate internet sharing, so I always set it to BASIC and the size to Small. Files are still 3000x2000px and bigger than I really want them.