Memory cards - SD

[Migroo]

Hi guys,

I will be purchasing a Canon body in the next few days and will need to pick up an SD card or two.

Apart from SDHC (higher capacity cards) are there any differences I should be aware about - are some cards faster than others?

Thanks
Chris

 

[alexhcowley]

Some cards are, indeed, faster than others. Bog standard SD cards are fine for single shots but if you are using burst mode on your camera then you will need something faster.

Card speed is measured in megabits per second, mbs for short. Alternatively, some cards are given a class rating, the higher the class number the faster the card.

When I started serious wildlife photography, I rapidly found that the aforementioned SD cards were far too slow to handle even a Canon 450D's 3.5 frames a second, so I upgraded to Sandisk SDHC extreme III cards rated at 30 mbps.

Whether spending the extra cash on faster cards is really worth it depends on what your photographic interests are. If you're doing portraits or landscapes, it's probably not worth it. For sports, action or wildlife photography the camera's memory buffer rapidly fills up so faster cards are a good idea.

 

[Woodsy]

Card speed is measured in megabits per second, mbs for short.

Sorry to be a pedantic moron, but they're measured in Megabytes (MB), not Megabits (Mb), per second. The difference being a factor of 8.

Needless to say though, everything else is spot on Higher the class, faster the card. The message to take away is get Sandisk!