SDXC Card Speed Question

[Sootchucker]

HI guys, am looking for some advice as to whether to look into faster SD cards than what I currently have. I have number of camera bodies, all of which shoot 4k (2 of which shoot 4k 60), and all have some sort of high speed burst rate (20+fps with Electronic shutter).

My bodies are (currently)

Olympus OMD-EM1 MK II
Panasonic G9
Fujifilm X-H1
Fujifilm X-T3 (only arrived yesterday)

The cards I currently have are as follows

1. Lexar Professional 64GB 1000x (90mb/sec write) UHS II Qty 4 off
2. Sony M series 128GB 260MB/s (100mb/sec write) UHS II Qty 2 off
3. Sandisk Extreme Pro 128GB 95MB/s (90mb sec write) UHS I Qty 2 off
4. Transcend 64GB (60mb/sec write) UHS 1 (never used) Qty 2 off

The reason I'm asking is that I'm just starting out with Video (4k), so am looking at larger cards (128gb), and was wondering if my current cards (Sony & Sandisk) would be fast enough to handle 4k (and 4k 60) ?

I've looked around at the "fast" cards (i.e. Sony G or Tough series - 300mb/s write and the Sandisk Extreme Pro 300mb/s write), but they are fantastically expensive, typically between £230-£270 per card, where as (for instance) the Song M series 128gb (as I have) can be had for around £80 each). So for the privilege of getting the fastest speeds, I need to spend nearly 3 times as much - why so expensive ? Where's the cheapest to buy genuine cards from by the way ?

So the real question is, do I really need the super fast cards or stick with what I have. For info, my burst shooting is confined to approx 10fps for just a few seconds for wildlife, and 4K videos of the family and dogs and of course holidays (say 5- 10 minutes per clip) ?

 

[Major Eazy]

If it is good and fast, it's not going to be cheap.
If it is fast and cheap, it is not going to be good.
If it is cheap and good, it is not going to be fast.

You'll have to put up with the costs of the cards if you wanted fast and good, otherwise if you hope for cheap, it may not be fast.

Well known brand names like ScaDisk and Lexar spend money on research and development to improve their technology, hence the costs of the cards being a bit higher, as some of the money from the sale of the cards would go to the R&D department (as well as other stuff like overheads, taxes, wages, paying back the banks, etc).

And best way to find out if you should stick to what you got or upgrade to faster is to go through your experience and see what happens. If you find your camera's buffer keeps getting full and haven't completed transfer to the memory cards, which stopped you from taking more photographs until they have been saved to the card, then you would know if you want to go for faster cards.

Think of it in the same way as we would with external USB 2 HDDs. Some of us use external HDDs that use USB 2, and some of us don't mind the computer taking like 10 minutes to copy files to the HDD. But if one person is miffed at the HDD taking an hour to transfer the files, then the person would upgrade to USB 3. Or rechargeable batteries and the chargers. Some may not mind a 5 hours charger, but if one person is miffed at the slow 8 hours, may opt for a fast but expensive 45 minutes charger.

So if you feel annoyed at your cameras taking a bit longer to transfer the images to the memory cards and forcing you to miss the next shoots, then you would know it is time to think about upgrading to a faster card.

Why not keep your current cards and still use them, buy just one fast card for today (when you are ready budget-wise), leave it there for many months or a year until you have managed to save up again, then buy another fast card. Keep using your current cards, but slowly build up fast cards, phase over from current cards to fast cards over a couple of years or so. Rather than worrying about the costs of replacing your slow cards with fast cards in one go.

 

[rob-nikon]

The reason for there being so much price different is the UHS-II cards are the newest SD memory card technology. How long ago did the Sandisk extreme pro 90MB/s UHS-I cards appear? I sent to remember using some 8GB ones in a D7000 or D7100 many years ago and they were quite a lot more than they are now. The sandisk extreme pro 90MBs cards have dropped hugely in price in the last few years.

Many cameras now take advantage of UHS-II for performance. The problem is you likely need the new faster cards to take advantage of the cameras performance. I’ve recently started using a Sony A7R3, at 10fps it couldn’t keep up shifting 40MB files about. The burst rate would slow after a few seconds and the camera would be unresponsive (couldnt enter the menu or review images- still able to take more photos just at a slower pace) whilst it was writing to the UHS-I card I was using. Changing to UHS-II Sandisk 300MB/s card for RAWs has made a big difference (I purchased only one 300MBs card, I sent the second one back as it would be for backup and majority of the time I wouldn’t fill one card. My back is now a slower 90MBs cards but that’s fine for the use it will get). The 300MBs card is much faster writing from camera to the card, no lag and keep up 10 FPS for longer. It was about £90 for a 64GB 300MBs card but it stopped restricting the camera performance.

Sorry I can’t help with the video part of the question. Have you had a look at the instruction manual to see what they say about memory cards and 4K video?

The best place for looking at prices and trends is camera price buster. Example below being a Sandisk 128GB extreme pro 300MB/s card:

https://www.camerapricebuster.co.uk...ds/Sandisk-128GB-Extreme-Pro-300MBs-SDXC-Card

 

[realspeed]

I have used Sandisk cards for video. look for the "V" on it Mine has V30 . this works ok for my Nikon D810 camera

Video Speed Class or "V Class", was created by the SD Association to identify cards that can handle higher video resolutions and recording features. This speed class guarantees minimum sustained performance for recording video.

The other speed classes are either not optimized or are unable to accommodate the recording of multiple video streams, 360 capture, virtual reality content or 8K and higher resolution video.

V Class
Minimum Sustained Speed
V6
6MB/s
V10
10MB/s
V30
30MB/s
V60
60MB/s
V90
90MB/s​