The need for speed

[nymaven]

All,

I was told that using a "standard" SD card in my Canon digital camera would require that I would have to wait 5-6 seconds before I could shoot another picture because of the slowness of the card.

The recommendation was that I buy a much more expensive "extreme" or "Ultra" card with "20" speed which would make taking pictures one after the other, instantaneous. Is this true?

unmaven

 

[ElFenix]

depends on the camera you have

 

[996GT2]

If you have a camera that isn't very fast to begin with (most point and shoot cameras), using a fast card will make zero difference. In most cases, a standard (60x) SD card is more than enough for most point and shoots. One thing to note is that you should try to buy from a trusted brand like SanDisk, Lexar, or Kingston, since read/write speeds for cheaper brands can vary greatly.

Example: when I had my Nikon D70, using a 4 GB A-Data card meant I couldn't shoot more than 9 frames in a single JPEG FINE burst. However, switching to a 512MB standard SanDisk card meant I could shoot indefinitely (100+ frames) in a single burst at 3 FPS. The difference was huge.

If you have a pro-grade DSLR that can shoot at 5 FPS or more, then yes, card speed does matter. You should go for the fastest card you can in order to get the most shots in a sustained burst of continuous shooting, and to reduce the time to write that burst to the card.

 

[kyzen]

If you were told that by a salesperson at Best Buy or Circuit City, I'm not surprised.

On my rebel XSi I'm using some cheap Class 6 cards from Transcend (spent $10-$16 on each one), and I can take really quick shots.

The folks at BB and CC seem to try to convince you that the cards they sell are faster than the cards you can buy online, even though they're identical, and will cost you at least twice as much, if not more.

I wouldn't suggest buying some 20x card, but I find these cheap (probably 133x) cards to be more than suitable.

 

[corkyg]

It is always good to know what sales people are gassing about. The "speed" of flash memory for digital cameras is one of those things that get "gassed. Consider this . . .

Speed of Flash Memory Camera ?Film.? Sometimes denoted in MBps, or in number of "X" like 60x 100x or 150x.

"X" speed rating makes reference to, and is derived from the speed at which a legacy audio CD drive would deliver data, 1t is equal to 150 KBps. For example, a 100x memory card goes to 150 KB x 100 = 15000 KBps = 15 MBps. Today we have speeds of 300X which can be used by DSLRs.

Your 20X SD card has a speed of 20x150 or 3000 KBps. That is adequate for most P&S cameras.

 

[Koing]

Most P&S won't depend on the SD speed because the buffer will be maxed out before it can shift to the card.

Most DSLR with an 'average' card won't be limited by the card also. Just look at all the tests on dpreview

Kiong