RAW burst vs high speed continuous drive modes - what's the difference, when to use either?

[Mike79]

Hi guys and gals -

The title pretty much says it all - which to use when?

Both can use flash?

Electronic 1st shutter preferred for either?

MANY THANKS IN ADVANCE FOR YOUR RESPONSES!

[FloridaDrafter · Accepted solution]

Raw burst will put all of your shots in a single file that you can scroll through and extract the ones you want to keep. It also allows for "pre-shot" where as you half press, several shots (about half a second just before you press the shutter all the way) are taken and stored in the buffer, then combined with the shots in the Raw burst file. High speed continuous burst doesn't place the shots in a single file and no "Pre shot" is available. In my case, I use Raw burst with pre-shot when I want to catch the exact moment a bird takes flight. Usually, your finger and brain won't act fast enough to catch that. So I watch the birds body language and half press a few seconds before I think it's ready to lift off which starts the camera pre recording to the buffer.

As for flash, I've never used it in either mode on my R6 II. I normally shoot Elec. 1st Curtain in either Raw burst or regular burst, except for focus bracketing, which forces electronic shutter where flash will not work.

Newton

[FloridaDrafter]

To add to my comment, a lot of folks complain about Canons implementation of Raw burst because it won't allow non contiguous selection of individual shots. You are forced to extract either one at a time or a range, say, 1 through 5,  and not 1, 3, and 5. You can extract singles, but you can't select them all at once. And when you do select a range, it puts them in another roll file and not individual files. Unless I want to use pre-shot, I just use plain burst.

Newton

[Peter]

The issue with individual shoots is with current version of DPP. Not third-party like DNGLab. But then you will get DNG files instead. I don't know how DNGLab handles Canon Makernote. Adobe DNG Converter didn't preserve that part when converting from CR3 last time I checked.

[p4pictures]

One other point, is that RAW burst mode switches the shutter mode to electronic shutter, there is no way to select 1st curtain electronic or mechanical shutter modes with RAW burst. As such it is not possible to use flash with RAW burst mode since flash doesn't work with electronic shutter at all, except for EOS R3. You cannot chose the frame rate for RAW burst.