I found an interesting flickr thread that concluded auto distortion on the d5000 increases blurriness/softness, complete with test images indicating such.
I've always been shooting with a few in-camera processing options on for convenience and been happy with the AF and IQ, but it does make sense there may be some effect on IQ.
This thread reminded me of it, so I thought I'd finally do the test myself.
I think it's interesting to see how much difference this option affects the image quality, it's subtle, but it's there.

edit: oh, my conclusion was the flickr thread wasn't really right (imo), I did not find a big difference, but w/o it was slightly better.

spraynpray said:
Regarding your jpeg comment Tao, it seems to me that I can see a difference between jpegs and raws on my PC.

Good to hear you found the culprit. That is a great find that I will make a note of!

I would agree with you on "coarser" between the two - depending on the NR you have applied in the camera. (I use very little.) I focus more on printing than what I see on my screen and for my uses (less than 11x14) I can not notice much if any difference. I also run all my photos through Nik Dfine 2.0 and that soothes both Raw and Jpegs out. I am also using a D300 which may make a difference but but I have no idea for sure.

For the record, I am sorted now, thanks to all.

For me it is simple - the auto distortion control was the culprit, turning that off gave me continuous shooting even in RAW. That seems straight forward as you are unlikely to need auto distortion control and continuous shooting anyway.

Regarding your jpeg comment Tao, it seems to me that I can see a difference between jpegs and raws on my PC. The raws seem to have a nicer detail, the jpegs seem coarser somehow. Also, I can't see the point in shooting jpeg's when I can export as most file types from Lightroom anyway.

You defiantly have a very fast card so I would say that is not an issue.

D-lighting off, Long exposure NR off, High iso NR off. Maybe someone knows for sure, but I think when you shoot raw it doesn't apply it anyway. You might also test/check with the compression settings on your Raw files as well.

I'm with most here, shoot jpeg if you are "spraying". The whole raw is better has some very good points, that is assuming you get the "shot". If you are shooting Raw and miss the shot, then it is not worth it. The only time I will go into Raw for fast moving subjects is when I am seeing an exposure range over 8 stops of light or is very shaded where I want the detail. Then using Raw can grab more light variance and is worth it.

*Jpeg - I always keep a original and lock it to read only and only edit copies. That way I don't have the issues with jpegs as others do.

oh man, i love you guys.

for the past couple months i've been having this same problem, and i had no idea why.

i figured there was a defect in the buffer or elsewhere in the card transfer process, but this solved it!

Now i remember! i reset the camera by pressing both buttons with green dots, "just to see what would happen" until now i had not realized this had turned NR and D-lighting back on...

Awesome

auto active d light, auto focus assist can only help you

Hi Shivas,

Do you mean the auto focus assist light or auto active D lighting?

Did u turn off the auto d light off? I've seen that slow down my shots before quite a bit....

What camera are you talking about Davey? My D5000 now shoots continuously in RAW so I don't need to use JPEG. I stopped at 20 shots which is enough to catch most prangs.

I'd shot in JPEG fine, large and have never had any problems. I use RAW now only in limited cases. Action shots and continuous mode shots i now do strictly in JPEG. I have had many photo pros tell me for their action shots they use JPEG. Better make sure though that your =/- settings are right though as you must be close to the proper exposure that way. I shoot a few for test quickly just before the action starts.

Magic advice guys, thanks.

All of the settings mentioned were enabled, and I found that if I turned them all off the camera shoots continuously. I then tried them all on one at a time and found that I can still use 'high ISO NR' and get continuous cycling. 'Long exposure NR' slowed it after four or five frames and the 'auto distortion control' really clobbered it down to three frames then take the rest of the day off!

Spraynpray mode is fully enabled!

Hello Spraynpray, I faced this same problem a while back on my D5000, some things i did to shoot more continuously was to Shut off Auto distortion control and the noise reduction settings. Also if you are shooting on high ISO, the buffer size is smaller as if you were shooting on lower ISO's. Hope this helps.

You can shoot full-size raw continuously just by turning off auto distortion control. Right now I rattled off 10 in a row with a slight rate slowdown after the 5th, but still near full speed.
With auto distortion on, I get the big pause after the 5th raw, but that one setting is the difference between no-pause continuous or not. Try it, I think your result should be the same as mine.
Kind of a big trade-off though, I rather like auto distortion on most of the time..

Shoot jpeg like I do with airplanes. The result is amazingly good :o)

dpooper79 - that's not the option in his situation, as he is shooting raw - so size change will not do anything; You can switch to jpg, and it will speed up Your camera. Upgrading SEIII to anything faster will not help, it's fast enough for even higher models than d5000 - it's the camera. Check the settings, as You might have noise reduction enabled - turn it off, and You also might have the longer exposure buffer enabled - also turn this off.

Try reducing your image resolution and keep the camera set to 3fps. You should get each image to the card quicker and the buffer will take longer to fill up. I do that on my D3s and can write to the memory card all day without filling the buffer.

Can't really spray and pray now ey....
okay that was a cheap jab. *ashamed*

It's the camera, not the card. The camera doesn't have the processing power to work through those images as quickly as the higher end models, as well as not having the buffer space to store the information. Regarding cards, you might wanna check out Rob Galbraith's site, he's got a pretty interesting comparison of SD and CF cards.

Hi Guys,

Just got back from a race meeting where a couple of riders obliged by throwing their bikes up the road in front of me for my entertainment. I am fed up that I couldn't do them justice because my D5000/Skandisk Extreme III (30MB/s edition) set-up only gave me three RAW images before taking a breather. I am generally happy with the frame rate, it is just the time-outs that stop me.

Do I need a better card (more MB/s) - or is it the camera?

Tanks,