Do highspeed CF cards make a difference on Canon A80

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I talked to several people and I can't get a consistent answer. Some say
yes, some say no. Do the higher speed CF cards make a difference? The
A80 takes a CF type 1 card. If so, which make and models do?

TIA

Archived from groups: rec.photo.digital (More info?)

"stormwatcher" <pgcs@yahoo.com> writes:
> For a 4 megapixel camera, yes, a higher speed card will help. Pictures
> will be transferred to the camera quicker allowing you to take the next
> photo sooner.

The S100 has plenty of buffering and I'd expect the A80 does too. So
the faster card will let you take a longer burst. But as long you're
within the burst limit, the faster card won't help.

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"stormwatcher" <pgcs@yahoo.com> writes:
> True. But most users do not pay attention to burst limits. My advice to
> Sam is to purchase a fast card, say 40X which is faster then the write
> speed of the A80. Too many people buy a cheap, slow speed card which
> then becomes the weak link in their digital system.

I still use an ancient S100 and have never encountered the burst limit
except when I've tried to on purpose. The S100 can buffer 9 shots
with the slow 45MB card that I had when I bought it. These days I use
a 128MB card that might be faster, but it never occurred to me to test
it. I suppose I could.

Somewhat more interesting to me is the card's read speed, which
determines how fast I can upload the contents into a computer. But it
hasn't been so important to me so far, that it takes a couple minutes
instead of half that time.

I don't know about 512MB cards but a fast 4GB card is around $400 and
a slower one is under $300. That's a significant enough difference
that I'm not sure which one I would buy today. Slower 1GB cards are
under $50 with rebate (zipzoomfly.com) but fast ones are in the $90
range. Anyway I'm using slow cards right now and don't really feel
limited by them, so I'd pay a little bit more for faster cards but not
a lot more.