Many Digital SLRs have a high speed continuous shooting mode. The images are often captured faster than the camera can save them on to its memory card. Because of this the images need to be recorded into the cameras buffer memory before they are written to the memory card.

Factors such as file size of the recorded digital images, processing power of the digital SLR and buffer memory size determine how many images can be recorded during the continuous shooting mode.

When the buffer is full the camera takes a rest and records the images to its memory card.

Cameras with a higher maximum number of shots are generaly more expensive than other digital SLRs.