Memory card for DSLR - does speed matter?

a148pro

Have just bought a Canon EOS 550D on line and don't think it comes with a memory card.

As such, I'm in the market for a card and ideally a 32 gig card. These can also be gotten cheaply enough on line, but the fast ones are more expensive.

So basically, is there a fear that if I buy a cheaper, slower one, it mightn't actually be fast enough for the camera and if I take photos too fast they won't save, or I won't be able to record video etc?

Or does the camera have a buffer?

I don't mind if it takes longer to upload onto a computer, its the write speed I'm concerned about.

Squidgy Black

never rely on just the one card, distribute your shots among say 4gb cards etc.

say you lose the 32gb card, there goes all of your shots compared to 1/8th of them among 8 4gb cards

a148pro

prob a good idea except I'd have to carry around the cards and would therefore definitely lose one, whereas if I had just the one card I'd never lose it, I'd just leave it in and transfer the stuff

incidentally, I presume a 32g card will be enough to hold loads of photos and video, even at high quality?

Squidgy Black

are you shooting in RAW or JPEG?

My 4gb SD cards can hold about 300 shots in RAW and roughly twice that in JPEG.

32GB would be overkill in my opinion, unless you were shooting birds or something, and each shot you were taking at like 4 fps or something like that, but even then it's a bit much.

a148pro

well I'm new to digital but from what I've read would be aiming at RAW. the main problem is I'm heading off to Borneo for 4 weeks and am going to be taking a lot of photos in the jungle etc, and won't be able to upload to my computer until I get back

and if I'm getting one I'm inclined to just shell out the extra twenty euro to get a high capacity card

but is my speed concern just paranoia?

Tallon

Use 4GB max

And for the love of god, don't buy cheap ones...

If your serious enough to buy a DSLR, then invest in the fast ones.

They will write faster, and when you do long exposures, they won't take forever to write

Squidgy Black

The HC one's are great for sports or wildlife where you need the images to write onto the card faster so you can get the next shot without waiting.

I'd say get a few 2gb HC if you want to shoot wildlife or other things and the rest normal 4gb cards. It'll work out cheaper than one 32gb HC one more than likely

a148pro

stetyrrell wrote: »

The HC one's are great for sports or wildlife where you need the images to write onto the card faster so you can get the next shot without waiting.

Ste is that to say that even though the FPS of the camera is 3.7 this is in fact contingent on the ability of the card to write that quickly?

would be really annoying to have to wait after taking a shot, can't imagine that in fact

also what is HC, a high speed card?

thanks a mill for responses and advice so far

melekalikimaka

cameras have buffers, huge ones google then figures, somewhere between 20 and 30 shots I think... card speed its pretty irrelevant, video... has some requirements, but anything new usually can hack that

Squidgy Black

HC cards are high capacity, they tend to write the images onto the card a good bit faster.

Also, if you have a 32gb card with a load of images compared to a 4gb that's empty, it'll take the 32gb longer to write onto the card.

One of the worst things that's happened to me when i was shooting sports a while back was that it took the card ages to save the image (I was using a backup non HC card) and I ended up missing the goal shot. Granted it wasn't a paid shoot, but I would've been over the moon with a shot of the finish.

stunt_penguin

melekalikimaka wrote: »

cameras have buffers, huge ones google then figures, somewhere between 20 and 30 shots I think... card speed its pretty irrelevant, video... has some requirements, but anything new usually can hack that

When shooting raw files the buffer on a 550D will only get 7-9 shots in before it's full and things slow down; I have noticed substantial performance differences before between using lower and higher speed compactflash cards in a 450D, where I'd get 9 shots continuous with the slower, and 12 shots continuous with the faster cards. A faster card in a 550D will possibly get you another 1-2 continuous shots, and the buffer will empty itself a lot faster.

With video it needs to be able to sustain 40mbps, after that you're laughing.

Paulw

I tend to use all 8gb cards (Sandisk Extreme cards (60MB/s) and Sandisk Extreme IV cards (40MB/s)).

I also just bought a 64GB card (45MB/s), mostly for use with DSLR video shooting.

I'll never buy memory from ebay, and only buy genuine Sandisk cards from well known suppliers.

NakedDex

I use the same. I have a pair of Sandisk Extreme 8Gb and about six Extreme IV 4Gb. I was happy enough with the Extreme IV's, but had the odd occasion where the buffer would get choked up after a long sequence or two. It only happened occasionally, but I missed a cracking shot one day because of it so I figured I'd give the Extreme's a shot and haven't looked back.
The only inconvenience was that my CF reader was a bit dated and didn't handle UDMA, so I had to pick up a new one. I wasn't aware of the incompatibility until I put the first card of images into it.

a148pro

Thanks lads,

Missed the last few entries but took the advice above and bought two of these:

http://www.elara.ie/products/detailsfullat.asp?productcode=GCE11902#spec

They are class 10 speed and High Capacity so hopefully I'll be OK

Final q - I presume I don't have to buy a reader and my Canon, which I'm pretty sure comes with a USB line, will hook up direct to my relatively new laptop?

Paulw

a148pro wrote: »

Final q - I presume I don't have to buy a reader and my Canon, which I'm pretty sure comes with a USB line, will hook up direct to my relatively new laptop?

Many new laptops come with a SD card slot in the laptop. So, check for that first. It's quicker reading a card than using the USB cable.

But, yes, failing that, you can connect your camera to the laptop with the USB cable to read down the images.

magicbastarder

Tallon wrote: »

They will write faster, and when you do long exposures, they won't take forever to write

i don't understand; surely a long exposure results in the same amount of data to write to the card as a shot at 1/8000th of a sec?

MiCr0

shop4memory and memoryc both have SDHC and class 10 cards for €13 and €16

savagecabbages

are SHDC backwards compatible?

i.e. will an SDHC work on my older Point + shoot which uses SD, also my laptop (3 years old) has an SD slot will this accept an SDHC?

TinyExplosions

savagecabbages wrote: »

are SHDC backwards compatible?

i.e. will an SDHC work on my older Point + shoot which uses SD, also my laptop (3 years old) has an SD slot will this accept an SDHC?

It depends -older devices will either not read them, or read them as being only 2gig in size (or maybe 4 I can't remember off the top of my head)

Tallon

magicbastarder wrote: »

i don't understand; surely a long exposure results in the same amount of data to write to the card as a shot at 1/8000th of a sec?

When I was shooting at charville, mine were taking ages to write

magicbastarder

maybe that was internal processing in the camera rather than the write to the card?

Tallon

Maybe, I thought the card write speed had bearing on it.

Does it not?

magicbastarder

well, a 10MB RAW file from an exposure lasting 20s should take the same length of time to write to the card as a 10MB exposure at 1/60th of a sec - what is written to the card is just the raw file. or so i would understand.

Paulw

The length of the exposure has an impact on the duration of time the camera takes to process that info and then write out the file.

While the actual file size is very similar to a short exposure, the camera takes much longer to process the file (even raw).

So, a long exposure will seem to take a lot longer to write out than a short exposure.

a148pro

savagecabbages wrote: »

are SHDC backwards compatible?

i.e. will an SDHC work on my older Point + shoot which uses SD, also my laptop (3 years old) has an SD slot will this accept an SDHC?

be careful trying this as I believe your old device may sometimes try and reformat the card reducing its capacity

stimpson

check out mymemory.co.uk for SD cards. I got a couple of 8GB class 6 there and they were by far the cheapest branded cards I could find. Free postage too.

jpfahy

I got a 32Gb Sandisk Extreme in Bermingham Cameras near Tara St Dart this morning for €199. They are doing a 33% off deal at the moment so their prices rival online retailers.
Buying there you know it's a genuine card. Sandisk have a lifetime guarantee and their cards are rated for extreme temperatures. Berminghams said they have never had one back.
My previous cheaper brand card failed in the cold weather and I lost some good shots (thankfully not the dolphin ones).
The new card absolutely flies along. When the camera buffer is full the card writes so quick that you can continue your burst, albeit at a reduced speed, continuously. Amazing performance.

Nforce

jpfahy wrote: »

I got a 32Gb Sandisk Extreme in Bermingham Cameras near Tara St Dart this morning for €199. They are doing a 33% off deal at the moment so their prices rival online retailers.
Buying there you know it's a genuine card. Sandisk have a lifetime guarantee and their cards are rated for extreme temperatures. Berminghams said they have never had one back.
My previous cheaper brand card failed in the cold weather and I lost some good shots (thankfully not the dolphin ones).
The new card absolutely flies along. When the camera buffer is full the card writes so quick that you can continue your burst, albeit at a reduced speed, continuously. Amazing performance.

This one?

jpfahy

'Dispatched from and sold by KOMPBAY'

Cheaper but would you trust them. I wouldn't.
I got Sandisk cards from eBay before. They were fake but such good fakes that the only way you could tell the difference was by their slower speed.

Nforce

jpfahy wrote: »

'Dispatched from and sold by KOMPBAY'

Cheaper but would you trust them. I wouldn't.
I got Sandisk cards from eBay before. They were fake but such good fakes that the only way you could tell the difference was by their slower speed.

"Stored,Packed and Dispatched by Amazon" so definitely trustworthy

Zillah

Paulw wrote: »

The length of the exposure has an impact on the duration of time the camera takes to process that info and then write out the file.

While the actual file size is very similar to a short exposure, the camera takes much longer to process the file (even raw).

So, a long exposure will seem to take a lot longer to write out than a short exposure.

You're kind of mixing up concepts here. There can only be one bottle neck, either the camera takes longer to process than the card takes to write, or vice versa. A camera doesn't swap info back and forth between the buffer and card during the processing, I'd say long exposures take longer because the camera has to do more processing, the writing would be the same every time.

jpfahy wrote: »

I got a 32Gb Sandisk Extreme in Bermingham Cameras near Tara St Dart this morning for €199. They are doing a 33% off deal at the moment so their prices rival online retailers.
Buying there you know it's a genuine card. Sandisk have a lifetime guarantee and their cards are rated for extreme temperatures. Berminghams said they have never had one back.
My previous cheaper brand card failed in the cold weather and I lost some good shots (thankfully not the dolphin ones).
The new card absolutely flies along. When the camera buffer is full the card writes so quick that you can continue your burst, albeit at a reduced speed, continuously. Amazing performance.

Do you work for Bermingham Cameras near Tara St Dart from which one can get trustworthy genuine photography equipment by any chance?

a148pro

jpfahy wrote: »

Buying there you know it's a genuine card. Sandisk have a lifetime guarantee and their cards are rated for extreme temperatures. Berminghams said they have never had one back.
My previous cheaper brand card failed in the cold weather and I lost some good shots (thankfully not the dolphin ones).
The new card absolutely flies along. When the camera buffer is full the card writes so quick that you can continue your burst, albeit at a reduced speed, continuously. Amazing performance.

Just a postscript on this, I bought two 8GB class 10 cards, products here:


http://www.elara.ie/products/details...=GCE11902#spec

My camera has HD capacity and the manual suggests use class 6 or higher. Obv I thought these class 10s would be grand, but when recording movies the camera often automatically shuts off after about 10 secs. When you restart it you can then record for as long as you want. This is obviously really annoying.

I'm pretty sure this is because of the card as sometimes an indicator comes up on the right of the screen saying the card is filling up, then the recording disengages. I don't think its the buffer because from experimentation the error occurs when I haven't previously used the camera and alsowhen I had just shot 20 rapid fire photos as an experiment. It also happened with the second brand new unused card. I formatted the first one in the camera, I just used the second one without formatting it first - both had the same problem.

So I suspect the moral of the story is maybe buy an established brand from an established shop if you're planning to record HD? But that awaits an experiment with such a card, I'll post with the result if and when I do this.