Fast Cards - are they really worth the extra ?

mikeyw

mikeyw

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I've just taken ownership of the wonderful D90 and thought about buying some fast cards ie Lexar 133x / Sandisk Extreme III SDHC etc.

Then I thought why do i need faster cards ? - i'm not that bothered about the movie feature at this stage so where else am I really going to notice the benefit ?....as i understand it the pics are all cached anyway and only written to card once you've finished the shot or burst.....it's not as if we stand around waiting for the camera to write to card before shooting again as the process is instant.

Am I missing something here ? - transfer from card to PC might be again quicker but again aren't we getting into diminishing returns ?

Please feel free to correct me if i'm talking rubbish :)

TIA,
M
 
you are basically correct, unless you max out the buffer, you are never write speed bound.

Write speed becomes somewhat important if you burst shoot as you will exceed the buffer. If you practice good technique rather than hit and hope photography, I don't think speed is that important.
 
Ah well i needed some larger capacity cards for the greedy 12mp D90 so went for some Kingston 4gb SDHC class 6's @ 5.99 from 7dayshop.....seemed a cracking price.
 
My SD cards are 7DayShop seem fine to me!
 
Think SDHC was worth it to get best out of the cams video
 
I guess I use the "hit and Hope" method, but on a cheap card I can get a burst of 3 RAW images before the buffer is full. On a Sandisk Extreme 3 SDHC I can get 7. When shooting anyting that won't pose for you, I find that to be a significant advantage.
 
I use almost exclusively sandisk extreme III.. i'm confident they do the job, no let downs so far, and not slow either ;) I'd only go to a slower card if it was a brand i trusted. Though that doesn't mean there aren't lesser known brands that are so good. Just that I need to be sure and confident if someone is paying :)
 
db247 said:
I use almost exclusively sandisk extreme III.. i'm confident they do the job, no let downs so far, and not slow either ;) I'd only go to a slower card if it was a brand i trusted. Though that doesn't mean there aren't lesser known brands that are so good. Just that I need to be sure and confident if someone is paying :)
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:agree:
 
It depends what you want. You camera is limited to a certain speed, so having faster cards won't make an ounce of difference from camera to card, but if you want to speed up transfer speeds to you computer, then the faster cards work. The fastest cards for my 20D and 1Dmkiin made by Sandisk are the extreme III's, so there's no point for me to pay extra for the extreme IV's

Peter
 
You only really need faster cards if you photograph subjects that requires high speed shooting. If you don't shoot that type of thing, then I wouldn't worry too much about it.
 
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