EOS R6 Mark II Interval Timer - Minimum Interval

[ScottR6MII]

Hi - I am shooting with an R6 MII.  I am curious what the shortest interval that everyone has been able to set and not have the camera skip shots?  My experience has been a shutter of 1.6 seconds and a interval of 3 seconds. The reason for the question is that I recently returned from a trip to Norway where I shot a number of timelapses.  The brightness of the aurora and the speed it moved was quite surprising so the shorter the interval the better. Ideally, I would like to have been able to get to a second or a smidge less, but the camera would start skipping shots. What I did worked, but the Sony shooter's timelapses were smoother.  They were at 1sec shutter and 2 sec interval. I tried that on the R6 and it did like it.

[SignifDigits · Accepted solution]

Was this movie time lapse or using the intervalometer for photos?   It sounds like you ran into a memory buffer issue.  It will depend upon whether your memory card is faster than the buffer memory.  For your card "compatibility" and "fastest" are not synonymous.   For your application a V60 card would be required, and V90 preferred.    I only shoot with the intervalometer and allow enough time for the size image at 250MB/s to clear between the shutter and the interval time and have never run into any issues.  So it's not really a question of the time the camera can be set to, but what the buffer clearing, your image size and your memory card speed dictate.

[ScottR6MII]

Thank you for the reply!  I am using it for photos.  I just checked my cards and they are V30.  I have some V60 that I had recently purchased as backups, so I'll have to give that a try and assuming it works (I have no reason to believe it won't), I'll use those, and eventually buy some V90 SD cards.  Thanks again!

[SignifDigits]

Glad to assist - hope it helps.  Please report back how it goes.  I was in Iceland in Oct 2024 and the auroras were amazing.  Unfortunately I wasn't as prepared at the time as you were.  The photo for my avatar is from that trip.  I've used V60s with no issues on the R6MII with both intervals and high-speed bursts of less than a second, but V90 is a more "future proof" solution, should you upgrade cameras in the future.

[TomRamsey]

One thing to check, if you have long exposure noise reduction turned on it can take as long as the exposure to complete the noise reduction after the exposure happens.  That would cause a longer time than 3 seconds and would cause skipped shots.  I can't think of any other settings than can extend time before shooting except that one, though there could be others.

[ScottR6MII]

Hi Tom - Thank you for the reply! I checked on the long exposure NR and I do not have that turned on.  I did an experiment with some faster SD cards that I had recently purchased as backups.  As it turns out, that completely solved the problem.  

[ScottR6MII]

Hi Tom - Your suggestion was spot on.  I tried a 1 second shutter and 2 second interval this morning with the V60 cards that I had recently purchased as backups for the Norway trip.  The camera clicked away with no problem whatsoever.  Which makes sense given the V30 rated cards have a write speed of 30 Mbps vs. 130 Mbps write speed of the V60.  I see the V90 cards have a write speed of 300 Mbps so that will be a future purchase for me.  Thanks again for taking the time!