What speed is OK for a digital camera flash card

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

What speed is "just OK" for a digital camera flash card?

Based on the recent threads here, I've decided to buy a Canon S2 IS but
that means I need to buy a new set of SD 1GB flash cards.

When I look them up, I see various speeds, e.g., 32x, 45x, 60x, 66x,
etc.

Then, I see hints that nothing greater than 45x is usable on a digital
camera.

Yet, when I go to dpreview, there's nothing about this (as far as I can
see).

I expect a speed/cost tradeoff ... but I am asking if there is a
certain speed we should NOT get.

Basically, what's the minimum USABLE speed rating for a digital camera?

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

battonthehatches@yahoo.com wrote:
> What speed is "just OK" for a digital camera flash card?
>
> Based on the recent threads here, I've decided to buy a Canon S2 IS but
> that means I need to buy a new set of SD 1GB flash cards.
>
> When I look them up, I see various speeds, e.g., 32x, 45x, 60x, 66x,
> etc.
>
> Then, I see hints that nothing greater than 45x is usable on a digital
> camera.
>
> Yet, when I go to dpreview, there's nothing about this (as far as I can
> see).
>
> I expect a speed/cost tradeoff ... but I am asking if there is a
> certain speed we should NOT get.
>
> Basically, what's the minimum USABLE speed rating for a digital camera?

It depends on which camera you're talking about, and which format of
flash memory. Most consumer cameras, including most of the "prosumer"
high end ones, don't use much more than 12X (about 2-3 Mb/s) and
anything faster is a bit of a waste; sometimes there's a slight
difference, but really, most of the time to store a file is in-camera
image processing time. dSLR's tend to be much faster; you'll notice a
difference in speed even between a 40X and a 60X card.

The other issue is downloading the images with a card reader - if you
have a USB 2.0 or Firewire reader, the speed of the card makes a big
difference; you'll save some time. With a USB 1.1 reader, however,
anything really fast is again a waste. I don't know how fast USB 1.1 is
off the top of my head, but I seem to recall about 6Mb/s is the
practical limit(about 24X).

1 GB seems to be a pricing sweet spot right now; the Sandisk Ultra II
seems to be well priced. It'll still be useful in 5 years when you
replace your camera again; likely in 10 years it'll be obsolete, so
don't sweat it too much. By then, most cameras will have built-in 100GB
solid-state storage drive the size and weight of a breath mint.....

ECM

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

ecm wrote:
> battonthehatches@yahoo.com wrote:
> > I expect a speed/cost tradeoff ... but I am asking if there is a
> > certain speed we should NOT get.
> > What's the minimum USABLE speed rating for a digital camera?
>
> Most consumer cameras don't use much more than 12X (about 2-3 Mb/s)
> anything faster is a waste;
> most of the time to store a file is image processing time.

Thanks.
It looks like, then, the rec.photo.digital recommendation is for a
12x or better write speed on a flash card and anything else probably
won't help (on the Canon S2 IS anyway).

Thanks. I found a few 1GB 45x for sale and a few 66x cards for ten
dollars
more each but if I can't use the extra 20x I may as well save my ten
dollars.

The time to store a picture is all that I was looking for (the 12x
quoted) and not the time to load the pictures onto the hard drive
(which isn't important as you won't lose any shots if you load photos a
few milliseconds slower but you will lose photos if you have a
slower-than 12x flash card based on what I hear from
rec.photo.digital).

Thanks for the advice - I placed my order for three 45x cards and hope
to have find results.

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

battonthehatches@yahoo.com wrote:
> This is starting to remind me of the bogus marketing octane
> "performance" claims. If the car, designed for 87 AKI doesn't ping,
> then giving it 100 AKI can't get any better performance. Can't get any better >
> (The AKI anti-knock-index is the average of the Research Octane Number
> and the Manual Octane Number for that fuel and it merely measures the fuels
> resistance to detonation - nothing else - just like 45x measures the
> flash card write speed, nothing else.)

Correction. M = Motor (not manual).

The point is the same though.

Just as you can't get any better performance with higher and higher
octanes, it seems (based solely on the information presented in
rec.photo.digital (nothing having been presented to the contrary on
dpreview or elsewhere so far) that 12x is a reasonable card speed to
recommend for non-SLR digital cameras and 45x is the upper limit it
seems on card speed for the SLR digital cameras with claims of 66x
being probably more marketing (like octane performance claims) than
fact.

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

> I had searched for this before I posted and I saw that web site
> http://www.robgalbraith.com/bi­ns/ [...] p?cid=6007
>which has nothing on what speed a flash card needs to be for a
>digital camera.

Did you click on the drop down menu marked 'Compact Flash Performance
Data Base'? If so (and if your camera is on it) you'll find a great
deal of info on how flash card speed affects camera performance. For
example, one camera I use has a speed of 1 MB/sec with the slowest card
in his database and almost 8 MB/sec with the fastest, which is a big
difference.

>Faster isn't always better if you can't use the extra speed.

The speed is also useful for downloading to your computer. Also,
someday you will buy a new camera (probably within a couple of years?)
and odds are very high that the new camera will be able to take
advantage of the extra card speeds. Finally, sometimes camera makers
put out firmware updates which improve the speed of their cameras ...
for example, with the Canon 1D MII I used to get about 25x write speed
with SanDisk cards but with the 1.1 firmware update this jumped to
45.7x with the SanDisk Ultra (same card as used in the first test). If
I had slow cards to start with I wouldn't have benefited.

I think the faster cards are only slightly more expensive than the
slower ones, at least from the same manufacturer. You'll probably be
using that card a long time.

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

battonthehatches@yahoo.com wrote:
[]
> Correct me if I'm wrong, but, that makes the 66x and 75x marketing
> claims for flash cards potential mere hyperbole.

Not when you are waiting for 2GB to download onto your PC, though.

David

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

Bill Hilton wrote:
> Did you click on the drop down menu marked 'Compact Flash Performance
> Data Base'? If so (and if your camera is on it) you'll find a great
> deal of info on how flash card speed affects camera performance.

Forgive me (and my ignorance if this is the case) but I read the
information many times and I don't see any mention of the minimum
recommended flash card performance speed?

Other than the 12x recommended here in rec.photo.digital, I can't find
any quote anywhere that says the maximum practical speed any particular
camera can write to the flash card (which is the limiting factor we're
discussing here).

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

Sorry if this appears twice, I got a server error the first pass ...

>> Did you click on the drop down menu marked 'Compact Flash
>> Performance Data Base'?

>Forgive me (and my ignorance if this is the case) but I read the
>information many times and I don't see any mention of the minimum
>recommended flash card performance speed?

There is no minimum, the camera will still work with any speed card,
even 1x (the slowest card I think I've seen is 4x) ... you just have to
wait for the card to finish once the buffer in the camera fills up.

>Other than the 12x recommended here in rec.photo.digital, I can't find
>any quote anywhere that says the maximum practical speed any particular
>camera can write to the flash card

The Galbraith site linked to earlier gives the measured speeds in
MB/sec. You can convert these to 'X' speeds by dividing by 150 KB,
which is what 1X is. So if he measured 6 MB/sec for one card that's
40x actual speed, for example. All his site shows is how fast or slow
different cards actually perform at, there is no minimum implied. 12x
implies a max of 1.8 MB/sec, which is pretty slow for newer model
dSLR's but maybe OK for point and shoots.