Does read/write speeds on CF cards matter much in a camera?

[brian_riendeau]

I have a Canon A60 that I will be taking on vacation next month. All I have currently is a 64MB CF card that iwill run out of room quickly. I have been looking at getting a new CF card that is 256MB or 512MB in size. I was wondering is the cards that claim 40X or 52X are worth the increase in cost over the cards with no speeds listed? Would I notice a difference between a plain Kingston 256MB card compared to a "Professional" 40X card that cost a lot more?

I do not care how long the data takes to transfer to or from the card when it is in my PC.

 

[Trey22]

Only SLR's will take advantage of the high speed memory cards. Let me see if I can dig up an article I just read on this (not the one on dpreview.com).

I have a Canon A80, bought a standard 512MB Kingtson CF card and it works great, both when taking pics at the highest resolution/superfine settings and capturing video clips.

 

[PhoenixOrion]

Oh yes, it does make a difference.

I have two 256MB CF that I use for my Nikon and should have had the faster one in during safari trip. LOL

Can't stand the seemingly longer "hour glass" icon when writing previous pic, especially when your jeep is about to take off to another spot on the jungle trail.

Enough on my soapbox.

 

[kpb]

I'd expect it depends on your camera, the pictures your taking and your situation. With the large professional cameras raw photos can easily be 10mb's a peice or more and raw + jpeg files is even more. When writing that out it the speed of the card can definitely effect how long it takes to write that. Depending on the design of your camera you might have to wait for the picture to be taken before you can take the next picture or can take pictures up until some buffer is filled. Either way the potential is there for faster write speed to allow you to take more or faster pictures. For casual clicking it probably doesn't make much difference but if your looking for rapid shots and multiple in a row like sporting events it could be a big one.

 

[zephyrprime]

Keep in mind how fast some professional photographers click the shutter (think fashion photographer). I suppose that fast CF would be absolutely necessary for those guys. But for a non-pro? I don't know how useful it would be.

 

[Kingofcomputer]

Today there is not much price difference in slow speed or high speed CF.
Kingston's CF is high speed from 128M long time ago.
Even for a normal DC, you can feel the big difference between the bundled slow speed Sandisk oem 8M or 16M CF and the high speed Kingston's.

 

[alexquick]

also it lessens the time it will take to load the images on your computer. which is nice.

 

[Mday]

The better cameras will take an advantage of the speed increase. You'll notice it more when the camera is capable of burst or sequential shots. The DSLRs are not the only cameras that can take an advantage of those speeds. But for the A60, there's no point in getting it.

It's the write speeds that are being advertised. The read speeds dont tend to increase that much. Since there is no specification for 1x writing or reading for flash memory cards, those numbers are misleading. Make sure you check what their 1x means, before going for 50x or 40x, etc.

 

[Dravic]

completely camera dependent.

My Digital Rebel SLR wont read or write faster then about 12x.

The benefit comes when i upload my pictures by way of my firewire card reader.


My camera uplaods slower @ usb1 speed.
My usb1 reader was a bit better then the camera, but not great.
My firewire reader FLYS. I can actually start a download and wait at the computer for it to finish.

takes about a min and a half, if that, to fully upload a 512MB card.. mmmm speedy


The burst rate of the camera is a direct result of the size of the cameras buffer.

The digital rebel and burst 4 @ 2.4 fps, the next series up can burst 9ish, and even the top of the line one might burst up to 40 pics.. but once that buffer is full it will only take shots as fast as it can dump to the media. flash cards are no where fast enough to handle direct writing to the memory cards.