Memory cards

So the price has fallen and even I can affor the a100. But not I come to another question. Which memory card to buy?

As far as I know the a100 supports CF cards, but there are a lot of CF cards on the market, making my choice harder.

So first thing's first. I thought it should be at least 2gb, but 1gb will do too, if I wont have any more money

So What should I be carefull? What do you take into account when buying memory cards? The writing and the reading speed? Does this actually affect the speed of the camera itself? So it is best to have the fastest card? And tell me which cards do you use.

Any help appreciated,
thanks
--
Luka

Hi,

I use Kingston brand for all my memories needs, including the SD for the Pana FZ30

Regarding the speed, that depends if you will shot in RAW, actions and sports. The in-camera buffer is large enough to hold three RAW and transfer in background (asynch) to the CF. Some members has recommended R/W speed above 50x. Now with those high speed CF, 120x is affordable and this is a good speed.

In my case, I have one 166x 4GB for actions and fast shots. I test one 8GB 166x and don´t work fine. FAT corrupt, wrong data offset, writting error, etc.

also have two 50x 2 GB for walk-round.

I don´t use RAW YET, so this volumen is enough for me at present time.

Best regards,
Nibbi
--
We build a bridge every time we post a pic.

http://www.nibdata.com (A100)
http://www.flickr.com/photos/nibbi/show (FZ30)

Recent discussion at
http://forums.dpreview.com/forums/readflat.asp?forum=1037&thread=23542032

Beware buying cheap on internet eg ebay. They did have a guide to identifying Sandisk forgeries which do not perform as well as the real thing.

Speed becomes more important as you shoot Raw ( bigger file sizes ) and shoot a burst of several seconds.
Speed will also affect how fast a PC attached card reader can upload the images.
--
robrol
A Dynax 7 film convert to the A100.

Well yes I plan on shooting in raw, so that is why Im asking. You are talking in 100x speeds. How does this convert into mb/s?

I was looking at Compact Flash SanDisk ExtremeIII 2GB, which has a writing speed of 20mb/s and it is within my reach.

So how do you convert this into SOMETHINGx speed? On another card that has a writing speed of 20mb/s it says it is 100x speed, so is this it? Is this the same for every card? If so Ill probably get this card now, and some more later, for more storage.
-
Luka

If you look at the Dyxum reviews of memory card speeds at
http://www.dyxum.com/reviews/cfcard/index.asp

you will see that the Extreme III is the fastest people have reported. I suspect the top line entry for the Ultra II speed is out of line with the other reports and with my measurements.

Many people recommend the Sandisk cards and I don't believe you will get a faster result on the A100 than with the Extreme III. At today's reduced prices it is well worth the investment.

From the same URL you can see that the cameras themselves have got faster with each new model, the A100 being the latest and fastest while the D7 cannot make the same advantage of the extra speed of the Extreme over the Ultra as the A100 can.

As I've never paid any attention to the 20x, 100x manufacturers ratings I don't know that they mean or how they correlate to real-life data transfer speeds. I assume they are comparative rates to the first rated speeds of some device, perhaps the original CD operating speed.

--
robrol
A Dynax 7 film convert to the A100.

I currently use a SanDisk Extreme II 2GB. It will hold about 480 jpegs when using the "large" picture format, and "fine" settings. Again, this is shooting jpegs. I just bought a Transcend 2GB 266X from Newegg.com for $34 USD. I'm looking forward to hopefully seeing a difference in the cards.

Veveritos said:

Well yes I plan on shooting in raw, so that is why Im asking. You
are talking in 100x speeds. How does this convert into mb/s?

I was looking at Compact Flash SanDisk ExtremeIII 2GB, which has a
writing speed of 20mb/s and it is within my reach.
So how do you convert this into SOMETHINGx speed? On another card
that has a writing speed of 20mb/s it says it is 100x speed, so is
this it? Is this the same for every card? If so Ill probably get
this card now, and some more later, for more storage.
-
Luka

Click to expand...

I have that card and shoot in Raw + Jpeg, my view finder show a 2 to left of the EV meter designating only a two frame burst is to be expected.

I very happy with its write speeds...

I get 133 frames of Raw+ with this 2gig. card...

hope that helps
fo

oops,

read: to the right of the EV meter in the viewfinder

I used to Use a Kingston Elite Pro 2GB card till I got a Sandisk Ultra III 2GB card. Just to give you an idea. I shoot RAW only. With the Kingston in my 7D I could burst 9 shots and it would take about a minute 30 sec to clear the buffer. With the Sandisk I could burst 10 shots and the buffer cleared in 10 sec.

So that being said I now stay away from the Kingston cards. I'm going to try a friends Lexar card to see how it performs. I like the 2GB cards, they hold around 250 Raw images. That 10 rolls of film on your single card. A lot of pictures to lose if the card goes south on ya. But still plenty pictures.

Veveritos said:

Well yes I plan on shooting in raw, so that is why Im asking. You
are talking in 100x speeds. How does this convert into mb/s?

I was looking at Compact Flash SanDisk ExtremeIII 2GB, which has a
writing speed of 20mb/s and it is within my reach.
So how do you convert this into SOMETHINGx speed? On another card
that has a writing speed of 20mb/s it says it is 100x speed, so is
this it? Is this the same for every card? If so Ill probably get
this card now, and some more later, for more storage.

Click to expand...

Reality is different. Sadly, it is possible have a card with a 133X reading speed and a 40X writing speed (try Toshiba, Danelec, and countless low-cost rebranded 133X cards and that is what you get). It's down the controller. I have very fast systems with USB 2 and Firewire card readers and I have yet to get any card to test out at over 15mb/s writing speed on the filesizes involved for RAW+JPEG with the A100 (10-20mb files). The so-called 133X cards sold by some very reputable names manage 14.5mb/s reading speed, but only 2.5mb/s writing.

SanDisk, in contrast, do pretty much exactly what they say and the writing speed is always very close to the read speed.

David

Luka,

The speed rating is in 150 Kb/s (Kilobit per second). The Sandisk Extreme III cards are 133x (150 Kb/s) which is about 20Mb/s or 2.5 MB/s (MegaByte per second).

The ratings are the read speed. Write speed is slower.

Cheap cards often have a higher rating printed on them than there real speed. The difference between read and write speed is often a lot higher with these cards.

The Sandisk Extreme III is a good choice. Just be sure not to get a fake.

Vincent

My figures go along with David's.

With 10MB RAW every 0.65 seconds written by the A100 to Extreme III cards I calculate 15.4 MB/sec while the Ultra can get to 7.3 MB/sec.
Makes the Extreme III worth the extra cost over the Ultra for many users.
Has anyone got figures for the Extreme IV?
or is 15MB/sec the limit of the writing speed for the A100?
I also calculated the buffer size to be 50MB. Has this been published anywhere?
--
robrol
A Dynax 7 film convert to the A100.

robrol said:

My figures go along with David's.
With 10MB RAW every 0.65 seconds written by the A100 to Extreme III
cards I calculate 15.4 MB/sec while the Ultra can get to 7.3
MB/sec.
Makes the Extreme III worth the extra cost over the Ultra for many
users.
Has anyone got figures for the Extreme IV?
or is 15MB/sec the limit of the writing speed for the A100?
I also calculated the buffer size to be 50MB. Has this been
published anywhere?

Click to expand...

The buffer is probably 64mb total, 60+mb free. It will do 6 raw files regardless of the card speed - I have tested this with very slow memory, and it will always do six files.

With the Ultra II, it will write seven before slowing; with the Extreme III, it will write eight; and with the Extreme IV (2Gb tested) it will write nine RAW files at 3fps (actually, about 2.8fps with autofocus) before slowing.

My conclusion is that for action shooting RAW where a burst of nine frames may be useful, the Extreme IV is a good buy. However, Extreme III cards are now being sold to UK customers by certain retailers (mainly Channel Islands VAT free) for £18 ($36) for 2Gb genuine SanDisk with free CaptureOne LE and file recovery software in bubble pack sealed retail units. I have just bought two more, so I have 1 x Ultra II 2Gb, 2 x Extreme III 2Gb, and 1 x Extreme IV 2Gb for special uses.

David

Kenneth B said:

I used to Use a Kingston Elite Pro 2GB card till I got a Sandisk
Ultra III 2GB card. Just to give you an idea. I shoot RAW only.
With the Kingston in my 7D I could burst 9 shots and it would take
about a minute 30 sec to clear the buffer. With the Sandisk I
could burst 10 shots and the buffer cleared in 10 sec.

So that being said I now stay away from the Kingston cards. I'm

Click to expand...

I just took 9 shots... it paused after #7, I think, and there was a long delay to #9. But after that, it seemed to take about 10 seconds to flush?

I'm currently using a 50x 512 Kingston Elite Pro. Looks like it's not quite enough to do continuous raw above about 7 or 8, but I'm pretty happy with that performance. Especially considering that I got the Kingston for a good price at the time. I'm used to raw photos (in my old camera) taking 11-13 seconds per write with decent cards. I don't use RAW often with that kind of performance. (I have fond memories of the time I used an even slower camera in RAW mode while trying to photograph bees! Forget that. They'll be long gone before your camera comes back. )

Kenneth B said:

going to try a friends Lexar card to see how it performs. I like
the 2GB cards, they hold around 250 Raw images. That 10 rolls of
film on your single card. A lot of pictures to lose if the card
goes south on ya. But still plenty pictures.

Click to expand...

And forget backing up to CD! You could fill up a DVD pretty quickly at that rate.
--
Gary W.

Well thanks for all the info. Looks like Ill buy the sandisk card. It is sold for around 42€ here in Slovenia and it too comes with some rescuepro program for recovery.

Thanks for all your help.
--
Luka

Thanks David.

I got 2x 4GB cards from 7dayshop, but they came without blister pack and no software for £41 each. They certainly perform to the genuine speeds. I'm getting a burst of 9 RAW shots before it slows if the Raw size is 10MB and 17 when the file size was around 7.9-8.0 MB when it settles down to a steady rate of 0.52 sec (7.9MB) or 0.65 sec(10MB) for subsequent shots.

I assume your file size is a little larger if you are slowing after 8. (My file sizes are MB = 1000KB not 1024KB).

While I agree with you that the memory size is probably a 64MB unit, calculating the amount of data captured minus the amount written in the same time, allowing for the writing being 1/3 sec behind the reading gives me a figure of 50MB effective buffer size, so I assume that the other 14MB is reserved as a workarea for the uncompressed data, etc.
But then, my simple arithmetic might be just too simple.
--
robrol
A Dynax 7 film convert to the A100.