Is class 4 SDHC card quick enough?

dougan

dougan

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Dougie
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I have a Canon 550D, I have found the Kingston 8gb Class 4 Elite Pro at a good price. Would this be quick enough as I shoot raw plus HQ Jpeg. Do not use the video side of it.

Thanks
 
as long as you arnet always continuously shutting (holding down trigger and rapid firing) then class 4 will be fine.
 
Dougie, since you appear to mainly shoot birds and as such probably continuous, I'd suggest only shooting in RAW. Shooting in both fills the buffer up faster which on the 550D isn't that large.

A faster class card should help empty the buffer faster however it depends on what the maximum speed the 550D can write to the SD card is.

You can get Class 10 cards such as Transcend 8GB for less than £10.
 
i doubt any modern SD card is slower than the rate at which camera's empty their buffers. i think this is just hype created by the card manufacturers
 
hsuffyan said:
i doubt any modern SD card is slower than the rate at which camera's empty their buffers. i think this is just hype created by the card manufacturers
Click to expand...

It depends on the camera, and the type of shooting you do. :shrug:

As pixels increase, file sizes increase, and whereas an entry level DSLR may do 1.5 - 3.5 frames per second continuous shooting, high end cameras may do 5-10 frames a second. Add shooting in RAW or even RAW + Jpeg to that, and the speed of the memory card can make huge difference. It is not hype. ;)

I couldn't find any specific info on the Canon 550D, the normally thorough DPReview didn't go into trying different memory cards during their 550D review. :(

Rob Galbraith has done test on camera/memory card combinations but has only done the 450D. You can see from that though how memory card speeds can vary. :eek:

I found a quite good video here of a chap comparing the bog standard Sandisk card and a Sandisk Extreme card. The speed difference is obvious. He said Canon recommend Class 6 cards in the manual, so that would be the minimum if performance is what you are after. Whether the camera can take advantage of faster cards is another thing. :shrug: :lol:

Obviously if you're a Landscape photographer who takes a pic every few minutes then the card speed makes no difference during capture. It could make a difference when transferring to the computer, but whether that is a reason to buy a faster card in that situation is up to the individuals wallet. ;)
 
hsuffyan said:
i doubt any modern SD card is slower than the rate at which camera's empty their buffers. i think this is just hype created by the card manufacturers
Click to expand...

I had thought the same but just had a look on wikipedia and the class of the card is it's rate in megabytes/sec so class 4 can write 4mb/s. My D90 makes 10-15mb RAW images so in theory can only write 1 every 3 seconds. In reality it buffers so you can take 5-10 pictures then have to wait while they're written out...but I'm sure it's faster than that so maybe the class ratings aren't that accurate :shrug:
 
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