What is the fastest memory card I'll need

[Wekiva]

...hmm....in doing research for this question I've found it's not as simple as I thought.

I'm waiting for the D80 replacement and have decided to get a high end point/shoot to fill the gap and for backup. I'd like to buy a memory card since I'll be getting the camera this week (either the Nikon P5100 or the Canon 950 IS btw). I was ASSUMING that everything these days was SD or SDHC and I thought all I had to worry about was the speed. But now I see the NEW D300 still uses CF. I was hoping my point/shoot and D90 could use the same card (which I still think they will) but was surprised to see CF still in use.....anyway....

I don't see myself as someone needing high end speed for my cards since I doubt I'll be shooting multi frames/second all that often. But I've also never shot digital before and may find that shooting 10 pics of my kids in a few seconds and keeping the best 1 will be handy. I'd like the cards I buy now to be capable of handling high speed shooting but I'm sure I don't need the top of the line.

What speed of SD card should I get? And does getting SDHC automatically put you into a high speed card so any SDHC card I would get would be fine?

Thanks

 

[jpeyton]

Get this.

 

[randomlinh]

and just to add, SDHC is high capacity, not fast. There are different classes, class 2/4/6/etc. Those are the write speeds basically. They'll all read fine.

 

[ElFenix]

pro level cameras will continue to use CF for a while because CF has pretty high limits for capacity and speed compared to other standards. as the D80 used SD cards i can't imagine it's successor would use CF, though.

 

[CyniCat]

Canon's latest pro camera (1Ds Mark III) writes much faster to its CF cards (2 x speed of predecessor). That said, the rest of the Canon range don't stress the card's write speed that much.

Don't know if Nikon is the same, but I wouldn't stress over it too much.

You should treat flash cards as consumables - don't use the same card over and over - buy new ones every so often. Then you won't have to worry about wearing the cards out.

 

[troytime]

all my cards are extreme III

i bought several other fast brands, but none performed as well as the sandisk extreme III

 

[jamesbond007]

The fastest memory card you need is the one that: 1) fits your budget 2) meets your capacity requirements 3) is fast enough for you when copying to your computer.

Most new digital SLRs have pretty large buffers, meaning, they can take many consecutive pictures without having to write to the memory card. Really, it depends on what you plan to shoot and your shooting style. Some people just love to 'machine gun' their cameras, so they are more likely to buy faster memory cards so that their cameras can write off the buffer to the card much quicker to reduce any lag or bottlenecks. Other people, such as wedding or portrait photographers, can get buy with some of the slowest cards on the market because they don't always have a ton of photos to write off their camera buffers.

PERSONALLY, I have 42GB worth of SanDisk Extreme III media, both SDHC and CF, and I'm stuck on the brand. I ran into some troubles early on when I got into SLRs a few moons ago and found that SanDisk didn't give me any hiccups.

I currently do mostly sports photography, but also delve some into wedding and portraits, too.

~Travis

EDIT: If you're hooked on speed and want to see what brand performs the best in your body, check out Rob Galbraith's Speed Test reviews. Just use the pull-down menu on the top-right of the page to find your camera. Use the archives link to find data for older SLRs. Enjoy!

 

[jpeyton]

I just got a great deal on an 8GB Extreme III CF card; haven't really noticed any difference with my $32 8GB A-Data CF card yet. But I don't shoot sports.

 

[jamesbond007]

Originally posted by: jpeyton
I just got a great deal on an 8GB Extreme III CF card; haven't really noticed any difference with my $32 8GB A-Data CF card yet. But I don't shoot sports.

How about copy speeds to the computer? I use Extreme III because it writes pretty fast to the computer and seems to be priced at the 'sweet spot'. I too got in on the recent SanDisk rebates (hoping to get back $240!) and have been pretty happy with my results.

My 1D Mark III has an insane buffer, so the writing speeds weren't of too much concern. I bought some SD and CF cards to do double-writes for the important shoots. RAW to each card FTW!