Camera Labs

Hi,

I will be buying my first DSLR camera (Nikon D80) in a few weeks but therefore i'd like to know what SD memory card I need.

I dont care about transfertime from card to computer, but I do want a card that doesn't limit the camera's ability to do multi-shots or stuf like that. The size of the card can range from 1 to 4gb for me.

Thank you (PS. wonderfull site and forum you guys/girls got here)

Hello bronze010, and welcome to the friendly Camera Labs forum!
I have a class 2 card and it slows the camera down so better buy the highest class SD-HC card (class 6) if you don't want the card to hold your camera down.

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Thomas (beware: Nikon-fanboy and moderator!) My Lens Reviews, My Pictures, My Photography Blog
D800+assorted lenses

Thank you tombomba2,



Aai, oke well I dont want that. So can you make a suggestion- brand, type..-. Where should I pay attention to when buying my SD card.

Thanks!

Well, the general precautions apply:
- Buy through a reputed dealer, preferably an affiliated store, as mem-cards can easily be faked
- Buy a reputed brand like Lexar, Sandisk, Kingston
- If you buy 4GB or 8GB you must buy SD-HC, don't do anything else. The DS-HC-cards can easily be read from the respective newer cameras (D80 incl.) but may not be readable from your run-of-the-mill card-reader
- If you buy 1GB or 2GB, there is no need to look out for SD-HC cards. Plain SD will do
- If you shoot RAW, buy at least 4GB (with 15-20MB for RAW+jpeg, you'll just get some 200+ pics on it. If you solely shoot jpeg 2GB is pretty good. Some people suggest buying 2x2GB instead of 1x4GB, but I find it more dangerous to lose the other tiny card, than to "put all your eggs in one basket". Because brand-cards almost never fail, but small things get easily lost!
- get a (speed-)class 6 card, like the Kingston Secure Digital Card (SDHC) Class 6 4096MB or the SanDisk Secure Digital Card (SDHC) Ultra II 4096MB incl. card reader (around 40 EUR)

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Thomas (beware: Nikon-fanboy and moderator!) My Lens Reviews, My Pictures, My Photography Blog
D800+assorted lenses

Thank for you quick reply. Well your story is pretty clear, but most of the time you cant see what class the memory card is in, if your talking about an internet shop. So how do I go from this point onwords?

High-Speed Class Rating - Class 2: 2 MB/sec minimum data transfer rate
High-Speed Class Rating — Class 4: 4 MB/sec minimum data transfer rate
High-Speed Class Rating — Class 6: 6 MB/sec minimum data transfer rate

Rating (minimum) Speed in MB/s
6x 0.9
40x 6.0
66x 10.0
133x 20.0

What are other people using, or experiencing with the SD cards?

But i'll do some more digging. THANKS

Edit: I found this, its about SanDisk Ultra II 2GB Secure Digital (SD) Flash Card Model SDSDH-2048-901

I tried several 2gb SD cards on my nikon D80. I don't care much about read speed, but write speed, the time it takes the camera to get the images written is important. I tested them all the same way, formatting the card, then holding down the shutter until the camera buffer was full (6 shots) shooting RAW images of the same scene each time. The clock stopped when all images were written and the camera was ready to shoot again. Here are the cards I tested, in order of performance. RiDATA Supreme Series 150X - 15 secs. Transcend 150X - 16 secs Praktica 150X (purchased in Bosnia) - 18 secs Sandisk Ultra II - 19 secs A DATA Turbo 150X - 25 seconds I have no idea how these values would change with different cameras and different applications, but more expensive doesn't always mean faster when it comes to these things...

You're right, not everybody lists the speed class so 66x or 133/150x is pretty good. What you can also see from the quote: even a class 6 card can be faster than a 150x card (SanDisk vs. A-Data).
The reason to buy from a reputed brand is not speed but reliability. And you wouldn't want to lose all 4GB of shots do a card-malfunction, won't you?

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Thomas (beware: Nikon-fanboy and moderator!) My Lens Reviews, My Pictures, My Photography Blog
D800+assorted lenses

No I wouldn't want that. I think i'll go for the SanDisk Ultra II (2 GB) and i'll see how that goes.

Thats an minmum 9 mb/sec card (write). But if you start calculating... its actualy quite slow sow maybe i'll go for the SanDisk Extreme III (2Gb) wich has a 20 mb/sec rating... I dont know, I act on the spur of the moment....


BUT THANKS, you've been a great help. THX

I got it, the SandDisk ultra 3 SD 2 gb... and its verry fast... !!!

I very pleased

Thomas,

How does your class 2 card slow your camera down?

Thanks,
Carey

what's the difference between SD card and SDHC card?

Yanacek,

For technical reasons, classical SD cannot go past the 2 Gb limit. Hence the recent SD-HC (for High Capacity), which can go up to 2048 Gb (theorically).

We mostly find 4 and 8 Gb nowaday though, even though you could find some 16 and 32.

@cstallings:
With class 2 you can only fire off a small number of shots (estimate: 3-5) before the internal buffer fills up and the shooting sequence slows down to a crawl. So no contiuous 3fps shooting
@Yanacek: Even if you see a non SDHC 4GB card (like I once bought), don't buy it: trouble is around the corner

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Thomas (beware: Nikon-fanboy and moderator!) My Lens Reviews, My Pictures, My Photography Blog
D800+assorted lenses

Usually, these are from cheap trademarks - and its better to avoid these. Rather pay 10$ more and have a decent and reliable memory card rather than save 10$ at the risk of losing all of your pictures abruptly.

I have 2 Scandisk of 2GB each, and it doesnt slow my camera donw, i have have used the "Fast shooting" on my camera servral time for sports pictures of my brother jumping of a cliff and landing into the ocean and it took him rought a few seconds to get down but i think i fired of 5 shots without a problem, and just for funsies i have tried shooting alot of shot i think about 10 or something and it worked great. But i did shoot this images in JPG. and it might not be the same as if u were shooting in RAW.

and when it comes to loosing, i dont think that is a "BIG problem" i awlays keep my card inside the camera and the other card is inside the camera bag, got this great lill storage area where i can keep my spare batteries and the other memory card

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I shot RAW + jpg which is 15MB on a D80! So this will fill the internal buffer faster and take longer to offload to the card.
And a 8GB SDHC card is currently below 40EUR.

_________________
Thomas (beware: Nikon-fanboy and moderator!) My Lens Reviews, My Pictures, My Photography Blog
D800+assorted lenses