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K-5 and SD card speeds

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My Sandisk 4 and 8 GB Extreme III cards (Class 6) work very well with my K5. No sign of lagging that I can detect. I recently purchased a 16 GB Sandisk Ultra (Class 6, 30 MB/s is written on the card) and have been generally disappointed because of slower speed as evident by the hourglass sign I see on the camera's LCD screen after taking a several shot burst. I don't know what the official read/write speed is for the Extreme IIIs is, but they definitely perform better than the Ultra.

Bottom line based on my experience, I'd recommend either Extreme III or Extreme Pro if you're looking at Sandisk cards.

Daryl
--
"Light travels faster than sound. That's why some people appear

bright until you hear them speak. ;) " - Daniel Whitney (aka Larry the Cable Guy)
 
Three confusions:

1.) The speed class of reported by the manufacturer (others testing report that Sandisk meets specs on essentially every sample but other brands may have significant variation).

2.) The actual speed may, in some cases, be higher than the class advertised. I have Extreme III that were labeled class six solely because class six was the fastest SDHC standard at the time. Actual speed seems to exceed class 10.

3.) The advertised speed may be the read speed, usually faster than the write speed that applies when the camera writes to the card in the field. A card advertised as 30 Mbps may achieve that only on reading from the card to the computer. Most of us don't care as much about that read speed so that "headline" speed may be of little value in picking the card we want.

OK - background out of the way. I choose Sandisk owing to the consistent performance and class 10 (at least) because shooting aerobatics (luckily, strictly from the ground) drives me to shoot in bursts. I want the buffer to clear ASAP for the next maneuver.

As always YMMV. I suspect that landscape photographers don't care all that much about card speed. Most landscapes seem to be rather static. At least that's the plan ....
 
Thanks!
Cideway said:
I did a small test on the Sandisk Extreme cards the other week.

http://forums.dpreview.com/forums/read.asp?forum=1036&message=40189899

Above is the link to the DPreview post below is the direct link to the full test

http://cideway.com.au/2011/12/taking-it-to-the-extreme/
--
Chris.

A weather sealed ultra wide, is that too much to ask?

http://www.pentaxphotogallery.com/chriside

GMT +9.5

Pentax SLR talk FAQ
http://forums.dpreview.com/forums/read.asp?forum=1036&message=23161072
Click to expand...
 
With my K-5, I opted for Lexar Professional Class 10s. I was able to get a two-pack from B&H for less than SanDisk Class 6's would be locally...

I did a 16gb two pack form $44, I think. Anyway, in heavy use at several recent shootings I have had no issues. Previously, I have used SanDisk Ultras and Extremes with no issues on my K-10, and even have one PNY Class 4 that, honestly, seems to do fine.

In my experience, SanDisk and Lexar seem to be what most pros use, so I opted for the Lexar strictly on price and availability. The card is well made, too.

-- pete
 
I'm using a couple of Transcend Ultimate 32GB. The ones with a black label.

They're very cost effective and go beyond Class 10 speeds.
19.5MB/s writes
20.8MB/s reads
They're not UHS obviously.

UHS speeds are not supported in K-5, they'd be useful if importing pictures with a USB 3.0 card reader though.
 
DarylK said:
My Sandisk 4 and 8 GB Extreme III cards (Class 6) work very well with my K5. No sign of lagging that I can detect. I recently purchased a 16 GB Sandisk Ultra (Class 6, 30 MB/s is written on the card) and have been generally disappointed because of slower speed as evident by the hourglass sign I see on the camera's LCD screen after taking a several shot burst. I don't know what the official read/write speed is for the Extreme IIIs is, but they definitely perform better than the Ultra.

Bottom line based on my experience, I'd recommend either Extreme III or Extreme Pro if you're looking at Sandisk cards.

Daryl
--
"Light travels faster than sound. That's why some people appear

bright until you hear them speak. ;) " - Daniel Whitney (aka Larry the Cable Guy)
Click to expand...
The Sandisk Ultra is a Class 4 card rated at 15mb/sec and is half the speed of the Sandisk Extreme 30mb/sec cards. My fastest Sandisk card is the Extreme Pro 45mb/sec card but they also have a 95mb/sec card (64GB Extreme Pro SDXC ).
 
Joe Ogiba said:
The Sandisk Ultra is a Class 4 card rated at 15mb/sec and is half the speed of the Sandisk Extreme 30mb/sec cards. My fastest Sandisk card is the Extreme Pro 45mb/sec card but they also have a 95mb/sec card (64GB Extreme Pro SDXC ).
Click to expand...
It's irrelevand when you use them in K-5. K-5 won't go above 20MB/s.

BTW, "mb" means mili bits ;)

--
Edvinas
 
For the record, apparently the latest Ultra cards are rated as Class 6 and 30MB/s...see photo. Don't know what the asterisk by the 30MB/s number means - probably some kind of discaimer regarding read or write speed. Regardless, it's still much slower in actual use than the old Extreme III cards when plugged in a K5.




Joe Ogiba said:
DarylK said:
My Sandisk 4 and 8 GB Extreme III cards (Class 6) work very well with my K5. No sign of lagging that I can detect. I recently purchased a 16 GB Sandisk Ultra (Class 6, 30 MB/s is written on the card) and have been generally disappointed because of slower speed as evident by the hourglass sign I see on the camera's LCD screen after taking a several shot burst. I don't know what the official read/write speed is for the Extreme IIIs is, but they definitely perform better than the Ultra.

Bottom line based on my experience, I'd recommend either Extreme III or Extreme Pro if you're looking at Sandisk cards.

Daryl
--
"Light travels faster than sound. That's why some people appear

bright until you hear them speak. ;) " - Daniel Whitney (aka Larry the Cable Guy)
Click to expand...
The Sandisk Ultra is a Class 4 card rated at 15mb/sec and is half the speed of the Sandisk Extreme 30mb/sec cards. My fastest Sandisk card is the Extreme Pro 45mb/sec card but they also have a 95mb/sec card (64GB Extreme Pro SDXC ).
Click to expand...
--
"Light travels faster than sound. That's why some people appear

bright until you hear them speak. ;) " - Daniel Whitney (aka Larry the Cable Guy)
 
I can recommend Samsung cards. They are fast and resistant against influenceces of the environment - fitting well for a water resistant camera.

Best regards
Holger
 
DarylK said:
For the record, apparently the latest Ultra cards are rated as Class 6 and 30MB/s...see photo. Don't know what the asterisk by the 30MB/s number means - probably some kind of discaimer regarding read or write speed. Regardless, it's still much slower in actual use than the old Extreme III cards when plugged in a K5.
Click to expand...
That's "up to" 30MB/s. For all we know that can be a 200ms burst read value. It may well drop to 6MB/s sustained writes.
 
Pretty misleading, isn't it. Thanks for the clarification of what the "*" was all about. Doesn't seem like they should be able to get away with it, but that's the way it goes sometimes.
Infrabasse said:
That's "up to" 30MB/s. For all we know that can be a 200ms burst read value. It may well drop to 6MB/s sustained writes.
Click to expand...
--
"Light travels faster than sound. That's why some people appear

bright until you hear them speak. ;) " - Daniel Whitney (aka Larry the Cable Guy)
 
As far as I know the K-5 can't take advantage of any card above normal SDHC C10 speed. The on board processor and interface can't handle anything faster. I know my K20 does not show much if any improvement above C6. However my Canon 60D can really tell the difference between C6 and C10. I have not tried anything faster as yet. Usually any camera doing HD video has to support at least C10 speeds. I read somewhere that the K-5 will support SDXC but will not support any of the faster throughput technologies, just the larger data size. And from my computer knowledge and Rob Galbraith's SD/CF card testing you will find that smaller cards of a given line will be faster than the larger ones because the larger ones take extra clock cycles to address the extra memory address lines.

However that would not stop me from buying the larger faster technology cards because they would definitely be fully supported in the next camera out.
Kent Gittings
 
Write speed isn't everything. Of course, I never use burst, mainly because I need the maximum IQ and file size, and I shoot RAW only. Write speed doesn't bother me much, because many of my shots are planned or set up. I don't rely on luck, but there are times when I need to hit the shutter button repeatedly, and the problem here is not so much write speed, but buffer capacity.

I had a cheaper card fail once and lost some shots, and although I've never had a problem with Sandisk, I don't use any cards over 8 GB (4 most of the time), because having so many images on one card makes me nervous. I cary three cameras and extra cards. Should one of them fill up, it takes only a few seconds to replace it with a fresh one.

A factor not metioned here is file size. With the same card, it takes longer to write an image with my K5 than with my K20D, and the K20D takes longer than with my K10D. The more MPs the longer it is going to take to write the file.

Still, the difference in write time between my K10D and K5 is just a second or two, and I don't consider it a big deal.
--

In the end, the only things that matter are the people we help and the people we hurt. http://pa.photoshelter.com/user/ronkruger
 
I have been using a class 10 card that came with my K5 from the store, Delkin Devices 8 G and picked up a PNY Class 10 16 G, Professional serices. It is interesting that Delkin says it is 24 mb/s and PNY is 20 mb/s. Not sure if that is the write speed or not but I have not noticed a big difference between the two when taking pictures. Once soccer season starts up, I see how they fair with doing burst shots.
 
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