Beginner Can anyone help me pick the correct memory card speed please?

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Hi guys,

I have a canon eos m3 camera and can not work out if the faster cards will actually improve performance over the "slower" ones, will the camera start to become the bottle neck?

These are the ones i am looking at:

https://www.amazon.co.uk/SanDisk-Ul...id=1525417999&sr=8-1&keywords=sdhc+ultra+16gb

https://www.amazon.co.uk/Sandisk-Me...d=1525417973&sr=8-1-spons&keywords=sdhc&psc=1

https://www.amazon.co.uk/SanDisk-Ex...TF8&qid=1525418035&sr=8-15&keywords=sdhc+16gb

I will be buying the "used" price on them all to save some more money :)

I used burst mode occasionally

Any help or guidance would be appreciated please
 
with sandisk memory cards look for the MB/s number. The higher the number the faster the card . I find 90 MB/s is fast enough to prevent a transfer "Stall" from camera to card. This is irrespective of card size or sandisk type, be it SD -CF or micro.

As for used cards I would not advise doing that, it is bad enough with fake cards advertised as new without going down the used route. Better to get one with less memory and new, than old with huge memory. Also the card size may be limited to what your camera is capable of, so check the instruction book first

You can get something like this for around £19

SanDisk 32GB Extreme Pro SDHC (SD) Memory Card U3 95MB/s V-Class 30

I don't think you will find 16GB big enough also do look at other places than the one in the links (strong tip) there are good reasons why
 
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with sandisk memory cards look for the MB/s number. The higher the number the faster the card . I find 90 MB/s is fast enough to prevent a transfer "Stall" from camera to card. This is irrespective of card size or sandisk type, be it SD -CF or micro.

As for used cards I would not advise doing that, it is bad enough with fake cards advertised as new without going down the used route. Better to get one with less memory and new, than old with huge memory. Also the card size may be limited to what your camera is capable of, so check the instruction book first

You can get something like this for around £19

SanDisk 32GB Extreme Pro SDHC (SD) Memory Card U3 95MB/s V-Class 30

I don't think you will find 16GB big enough also do look at other places than the one in the links (strong tip) there are good reasons why

Thanks for your help!

Was wondering if it is bethe r to have four 16gb cards rather than two 32gb cards. So if one card fails I have lost a lot less..
 
It depends how paranoid you are and how critical the photos are to you?
I don't shoot as a business, just a hobby so I just use one 64gb card and that's it. If I lose the photos from a day out, its not the end of the word. Total card failures are very rare and in most cases you can still retrieve the photos if they are really critical to you.
At the end of each shoot, I do clear the memory card onto the PC though - I cant be one of these people with files on there from months ago!!
 
It depends how paranoid you are and how critical the photos are to you?
I don't shoot as a business, just a hobby so I just use one 64gb card and that's it. If I lose the photos from a day out, its not the end of the word. Total card failures are very rare and in most cases you can still retrieve the photos if they are really critical to you.
At the end of each shoot, I do clear the memory card onto the PC though - I cant be one of these people with files on there from months ago!!

I have my camera stolen before on last day of , holiday and all the photos were on the one card :( so I was thinking a card a day. Would like 4gb ones but they don't seem to exist at high speeds
 
Backup to another device?
When on holiday, each day I back my photos up to my phone. (usually around 50 per day). Obviously having a spare card is easy too!

I use Sandisk extreme and or Extreme Pro. Very good cards.
 
Backup to another device?
When on holiday, each day I back my photos up to my phone. (usually around 50 per day). Obviously having a spare card is easy too!

I use Sandisk extreme and or Extreme Pro. Very good cards.

Are the pros worth the extra money have you noticed a performance increase over the extremes?
 
Are the pros worth the extra money have you noticed a performance increase over the extremes?


This really depends on the camera and your shooting style, there's no obvious info on the internet but unless you machine gun long bursts the 80mbs will be fine. That said the 90mbs ones aren't much more and so I would get those.

A word of caution buying 'used' prices, there are LOADS of fake cards and people will try anything to get them into peoples hands (such as selling them used) so it is wise to ALWAYS buy new from a good source - Amazon is fine as long as it is fulfilled by Amazon.
 
I always buy new, and usually from Amazon unless another reputable retailer has a sale on. Dont buy from ebay!

As above, unless you are shooting bursts etc, just go for the extreme. 80 Mbs is fine.
If you do alot of bursts / Hi quality Video then go for the Extreme Pro.

If there isnt much difference in price, you might as well plump for the pro!
 
I used 16GB cards and have 4 in my bag.
I back up to a laptop every evening of the holiday, full cards in the hotel safe and don't reuse cards until I get back and have the images copied into at least 2 other places.
Worst loss to theft is that day's images (and the camera :eek:)
16GB is more than enough with my Olympus E-M10 (16MP) shooting RAW+JPG.
If I did video I'd probably double down on 32GB cards.

When you look at what we used to pay for a film and processing SD cards look silly cheap for 1000's of photos ;)
 
Unfortunately your camera hasn’t been tested on this website:

https://www.cameramemoryspeed.com/

It’s my go to website to investigate memory card performance when buying new cards.

Sometimes the camera can restrict card write speed performance. I know the Nikon d800 did and it meant you didn’t benefit from the faster write speed abut you did get the faster transfer rate to the computer so all wasn’t lost.

Don’t forget most advertised speeds on cards is read speed. The write speed can often be lower.

I’ve gone down the route of 64GB cards just because of file size (I have a Nikon D810). I want to pick up another 64gb CF card so I can have a pair of SD & CF cards I can swap in part way through trips so not to lose everything if I did lose the camera.

Currently I use the 95mbs Sandisk extreme pros and the Lexar pro 160mbs CF cards because of their speed. At the current price of the SD 95mbs extreme pros ithey are a no brainer for me over the cheaper priced lower performance SD cards. CFs being dearer it’s a difficult choice but I’m hoping the prices drop soon.
 
Card speed only matters if you take fast pictures. When all I did was landscapes and architecture, any card speed was fine as my burst rate was around one shot every ten minutes. Now I have started doing wildlife, card speed is rather important and I have had to replace my old cards as the camera kept stopping while it wrote to the card.
 
Regards what card speeds to get it might be worth looking in the manual or camera companies website to see what is recommended. For stills on my Panasonic G80 the first card you listed is ok, but if I want to record 4k video then I need the extreme version. I currently have two of the ultra cards and there fine for stills use.
 
Having had a chance to look at the spec of the camera you will be using I think any of those would probably be good enough. The camera doesn’t seem to be built for speed at 4.2 FPS so card speed should be too much of an issue as long as it’s a uhs-1 class 10 card as recommended in the specs. Continuous shooting with RAWs looks like it’s limited to 5 shots or 1000 for JPEG.

Regarding the size of the card, it looks like a 16GB card will hold an estimated 500 RAWs. JPEG Large gives you much more at 1680. That gives you an idea if 16GB cards are right for you or not.

http://support-sg.canon-asia.com/contents/SG/EN/8202259000.html


I will be buying the "used" price on them all to save some more money :)

For the £1-2 you are going to save buying the used cards I personally wouldn’t. The warranty you get with new cards is worth that saving alone. You don’t know if they will be genuine cards buying used from marketplace sellers. On amazon I only buy memory cards directly from amazon uk themselves, there have been incidents of marketplace sellers selling fake cards. Memory cards are what we trust to store our image data, why scrimp on them to save a pound or two?
 
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