Hello
About to flash my camera to accept 2Gb SD cards and I've just become aware that SD cards can be high speed.
I first saw 66x cards and then saw 155x.
What are these cards n times quicker than?
I've seen one internet review that says that a Minolta Z3 will benefit from a high speed SD card, but without any scientific evidence to back this up.
Is anyone aware of any gumpf that could let me know if there is a maximum speed for cameras? Or will they be capable of writing at the max speed of the memory no matter how fast it gets?
Also, does memory get less accuarate and stable at higher speeds? Maybe have less lifetime number of writes? More battery usage ? Maybe there is no downside to going faster, certainly cost isn't all that much more if you shop around.
Cheers
snedger

Here is a couple of links to help you. The first is a database for common cameras. You can see if your camera can benefit from faster cards. The second shows the difference in a card reader. Bottom line: most cameras do not benefit much from faster cards. Even if there is a difference you will notice very little increase. Where it can make a difference is in your card reader. Sometimes there are fringe benefits which can sway you such as the Sandisk Extreme III which is built to higher tolerances for extreme temps etc for mission critical work and it also comes with recovery software to save that prize winning photo that makes you famous from your corrupted card. One other point: its better to have 4 x 1 gig cards than 1 x 4 gig card. Why? Because it spreads the risk of a card failing and worst case you lose 1 gig instead of 4 gigs of photos. Hope that helps

http://robgalbraith.com/bins/multi_page.asp?cid=6007
http://www.robgalbraith.com/bins/content_p...cid=7-7883-7912

tumrumble is correct in his advice. You may find your camera will not benifit at all from a high speed card.

It is mainly some of the newer madels which offer high seed continuous image capture that need a high speed card. This is because the image needs to be written from the buffer memory to the card before the next image can be taken. So the faster the image is written the sooner the camera can take the next shot.

As you can see this only applies in continuous shooting mode, If you just snap one photo at a time it won't really make a lot of difference how fast it is written to the card.

The other reason for a high speed card is that some cameras perform better when captureing video with a high speed card.

One thing I would consider though, if you need a new card and your budget is sufficient, a high speed card may be a benefit if you upgrade your camera in the future. You won't have to buy another new card.

thanks for some good points guys!
I actually got a reply from Minolta technical support just now and they say that the Z3 will not benefit from more than 40x.
Cheers!

High spped Sd Cards. Great Price as well from memoryking.com

http://www.memoryking.com/mall/departmentp...yKing/69289/1/1