SDHC VS high performance SDHC

[Joshjay2]

I'm in the process of picking out my first mirriroless camera and I found some storage on sale it was an eight dollar difference to get the high-performance a Card am I really going to notice a difference? I do want to shoot some video and I read some things That say video shooting maybe better with a high-performance card any thoughts on that anyone?

Me being a penny pincher I was tempted to save the 8 bucks haha

 

[robbins.photo]

What matters is the read/write speed of the cards. Manufactures use terms like Super and Pro and all sorts of gimmicks and catch phrases, but the true measure of an SD card is how fast can it read and write data.

My personal preference in SD cards is a Sandisk Extreme Pro cards, they have a 95 mb/sec read/write speed that makes a big difference when shooting longer bursts with my camera. They are however more expensive than a more "standard" SD card as most of them have read/write speeds of around 40-45 mb per second. Personally I think they are worth the extra expense.

But either should be able to keep up with shooting video just fine.

 

[Derrel]

SanDisk Extreme here. Always worth the money to go with a high-peformance card. It pays not to be a cheapskate on a few things, like fire extinguishers, life jackets, tires, brakes, ladders, stuff like that. Over a three year lifespan, an $8 difference is about 23 cents more per month. Splurge a little.

 

[Joshjay2]

SanDisk Extreme here. Always worth the money to go with a high-peformance card. It pays not to be a cheapskate on a few things, like fire extinguishers, life jackets, tires, brakes, ladders, stuff like that. Over a three year lifespan, an $8 difference is about 23 cents more per month. Splurge a little.

Thanks for the thought I did spend the extra money and they are class ten Lexar cards it was only 17 bucks Canadian for a 32 gig On sale, so just need the camera now ..but stuck on Nikon d3300 vs sony a5000 each seem to have their benefits

 

[robbins.photo]

SanDisk Extreme here. Always worth the money to go with a high-peformance card. It pays not to be a cheapskate on a few things, like fire extinguishers, life jackets, tires, brakes, ladders, stuff like that. Over a three year lifespan, an $8 difference is about 23 cents more per month. Splurge a little.

Thanks for the thought I did spend the extra money and they are class ten Lexar cards it was only 17 bucks Canadian for a 32 gig On sale, so just need the camera now ..but stuck on Nikon d3300 vs sony a5000 each seem to have their benefits

Well I'm a Nikon fan myself, Sony makes a fine camera but one of the things I always consider is the used market for equipment. Nikon is a huge brand that has a massive following and it's been around for years. Go on Ebay and take a look at the hundreds and hundreds of lenses and other accessories that are available for the Nikon system. Then do the same with Sony. You'll find used Sony equipment is much harder to come by - and you have a lot fewer options.

I'll also be honest in saying that as a company, frankly I don't trust Sony. They have a bad tendency to abandon technology all too often, and with as many mounts as they have available I always have to wonder if maybe a few years down the road they won't decide, ok were going to give up on this mount and focus on this other mount, or we'll abandon it and do something completely different...

So for me I was always very leery of Sony cameras. I don't want to invest in a system only to find that 2-5 years down the road the stuff I have has been abandoned and nobody is making lenses/accessories for it anymore. I could be off base on this I guess, but just something about how Sony always seems to be going in 25 different directions at once just throws up a red flag for me when I think about investing in a system.

And honestly that's how you need to look at things, your not really so much buying a camera as you are investing in a system. If you buy a Nikon you'll almost certainly buy another Nikon when you get ready to upgrade, etc etc. The more you invest in one system the more expensive and difficult it becomes to change to another system.

 

[Joshjay2]

Wow that's a few really good points I think your right with going with Nikon and thinking of building up one camera and equipment over the years as one system.
Thanks for the input !

 

[Derrel]

WOW--$17 for a 32-gig Lexar card on sale! MAN! So envious! My camera shoots CF card format memory, which is always a lot more expensive...I went to Fry's the other day, and on the sales floor they had exactly THREE choices in CF Cards, and like....29 different SKU's in SD and SDHC card format memory! Lexar is a respected, old-line brand in camera memory. I think you'll be glad you got the higher-performance card.

 

[Joshjay2]

I was tempted to get another one but I don't even have my camera yet
Well I have a a camera but it's just a point and shoot but hey it got me interested enough in photos to get a real camera

 

[robbins.photo]

Wow that's a few really good points I think your right with going with Nikon and thinking of building up one camera and equipment over the years as one system.
Thanks for the input !

Happy to help, I looked around at a lot of different systems myself before deciding to go with Nikon. I really liked some of the Pentax cameras, but they didn't have the upgrade options (at least at that time) that Nikon had, I don't think they even had a full frame option when I opted to go with Nikon.

The used market and availability of lenses was also a huge selling point for me, I've bought most of my equipment used and all but one of my lenses used, so having so many options available really made a huge difference.

So I ended up going Nikon, I started with a D5100,upgraded to a D5200, and am now shooting a D7100. I've been happy with each upgrade, and I'm hoping to be able to step up to a D610 at some point in the hopefully not so distant future.

 

[WayneF]

I'm in the process of picking out my first mirriroless camera and I found some storage on sale it was an eight dollar difference to get the high-performance a Card am I really going to notice a difference? I do want to shoot some video and I read some things That say video shooting maybe better with a high-performance card any thoughts on that anyone?

Me being a penny pincher I was tempted to save the 8 bucks haha

There are two types of speed... card type, and ... well I guess card speed.

Newer card types are faster, but the camera should support that type. You can just buy the card type recommended in your camera manual. You should at least get that card type.

Newer cards will have faster specs, and they will be backward compatible with our cameras, and they will work, but more type than our camera implements will not be useful to the camera. Except it is possible that you might have a newer card reader, and it may still be faster in the reader.

And then there is card speed. Within a given type of card interface, maybe SDXC UHS-1, different cards have different speed ratings. Normally read is faster than write. The camera only writes, the card reader normally only reads.

If you shoot JPG, a 24 megapixel image is only about 12 MB. If you shoot one each second, that is only 12 MB per second needed for card speed. If you shoot continuous 5 frames per second, that is 60 MB/second. What is the point of a 95 MB/second card? (except at the card reader).

But if you shoot Raw, the files are much larger, maybe 22 MB. Then 5 fps becomes 110 MB/second, and if you do more than a second or two (buffer), you may want all the card speed you can get.

But you can buy a card faster than the camera can write. I have Lexar X1000 cards, but my D800 can only write about 70 MB/second, so some of the speed is wasted. Except that it is rather fast in the card reader.

You can time your current speed.. Time the writing of a continuous burst mode of maybe 5 or 10 raw images. Time the green card access LED. Then multiply for total MB written, and divide by seconds, MB/second.

And in the camera, extreme card speed is only a factor for shooting continuous raw files. For single raw files or even continuous JPG, not much speed is really needed. But again, downloading a couple hundred of them in the card reader does make us think about speed. Our card reader should be USB 3.0 and should handle the card type. But we should realize why we are buying speed. One JPG every few minutes has no use for much card speed.

Movie mode is even slower yet. Much smaller images, and the card has the length of the movie to write it, and any Class 10 card is plenty for movies. Except again, there is the card reader.