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Be got a Nikon D3100 on order and I'm looking to get an SD card or 2. Do I just buy the cheapest available or is there actually quality standards?
The one card listed at under £15 on the front page of a search for '16GB Class 10' turns out to cost £13.95 and is supplied by a third party as opposed to Amazon themselves. Reading the reviews (click on the '1 star' link), there are a lot of problems reported, most of which would appear to point to questions about just how genuine the cards are.If you look on Amazon, you can get a 16GB Class 10 card for under £15.
I appear to have been misunderstood.
My concern was not with choosing a manufacturer (though there are good and bad and my preference is for Kingston with their warranty), but with selecting a retailer. The card being to referred to on Amazon is not supplied by Amazon, but by another reseller on there. Now I don't know anything about them, but my experience, and advice from elsewhere, is to be wary of anyone who is not 'well known' and with a 'good reputation' and who is selling cards at low prices. If the card was being sold at the prices displayed by Amazon themselves I would have no concerns.
KC Leblanc said:Are you planning on doing much video, I don't and I've never needed a card bigger then 4GB.
Mainly stills, maybe a few mountain view videos or mountain bike vids but not alot.
Thanks for your views, I know where to look now
Dave1 said:AIUI, the card speed is more important if used for video, if you do intend using the cards for video try and get Class 10 cards.
Morph3ous said:Better price than 7dayshop. Only £18 for a 16GB Class 10 Sandisk.
http://www.amazon.co.uk/SanDisk-Secure-Digital-Capacity-Extreme/dp/B0037FLUYU/ref=reg_hu-rd_add_1_dp
I only use Sandisk, check there is a serial number on it . CF cards have them on the edge
SD cards may not have any
Realspeed
the main difference is that write speeds for Transend and Kingston are going to be around 10-12mb/s even on the 10x cards, where as the Sandisk Extreme, and Lexar Pro cards can actually get to around 20 mb/s and sometimes more. Though in the real world the write speed will have more to do with your camera than the cards when it comes to SD.
The current SDHC specification defines Class 2, 4, 6, 8 and 10 as follows:
http://kb.sandisk.com/app/answers/detail/a_id/1996/~/difference-between-speed-class-and-speed-ratings-(performance)-for-sd%2Fsdhc-cards
Class Minimum Speed
2 2MB/s
4 4MB/s
6 6MB/s
8 8MB/s
10 10MB/s
That makes no sense, the speed class is an industry rating, and even Sandisk quote class 10 as 10MB/s.
I should have been more clear, when you get a class 10 Transend and Kingston it is usually only able to get up to 10mb/s. However Sandisk and Kingston Class 10 SD cards can usually do around 20 mb/s.
Rated Speed (e.g. 15MB/s, 30MB/s, etc.) is maximum speed of the card and also what you would expect to approximately see in typical usage of writing or reading files on the card. This measurement is pertinent to still photography, especially for taking pictures with high resolution and/or saving in RAW format where the files created are very large. The faster the card, the faster it can save the file and be ready to take another picture. You can really notice speed differences with high-megapixel DSLR cameras when using multi-shot burst mode.
Still digital images shot on high-megapixel cameras should utilize fast data throughput (a large data pipe), higher speed cards for improved performance. Higher speed cards can also improve how fast you can*transfer*the files to and from the card*and your computer.
Speed Class is a minimum speed based on a worst case scenario test. The Speed Class is important for video mode or camcorders, where the device is actually saving a steady stream of data. The resolution and format of the video determines the amount of steady stream data. This translates to a minimum speed you need to guarantee that the video captured on the cards is recorded at an even, sustained rate with no dropped frames (which*would result in lost data and choppy playback).
Compared to high-megapixel photography, video doesn't need as big a data pipe because the video format is a smaller "fixed stream" that uses only a portion of the data pipe. But you do need a minimum guaranteed speed for the SDHC card that satisfies the requirement of the data stream. Your camera's specifications should state the minimum SDHC Class Rating required.
Using a card without the proper class rating on a more advanced camera, such as a high-definition (HD) camcorder or Digital Single Lens Reflex (DSLR) camera with HD video record settings is likely to result in an error message indicating that video can only be recorded at a lower definition setting.
Some SD cards are marked as "Video". Is this just a marketing gimmick, or is there actually a difference?
For example, compare these two. What's the difference apart from £15?
http://www.amazon.co.uk/SanDisk-32GB-30MB-Extreme-Video/dp/tech-data/B004Q3C98S
http://www.amazon.co.uk/SanDisk-Extreme-30MB-Flash-memory/dp/B002MRR9A8
Same card bar the label, if you check the specifications of both they are identical.
Printing that extra word onto the label is pretty expensive