Fastest CF card For Nikon D70

danrow_99 · 31 Mar 2006 at 22:40

What's the fastest speed card that a Nikon D70 can use effectively?
I have to choose between x66, x100 and x133. I want the fastest possible write times, but I don't want to fork out the extra for a x133 card if the camera is only capable of writing at x100 (or whatever).
Basically I need to know what's the slowest speed for maximum performance on a D70.
Any advice would be much appreciated.

Tomsk · 31 Mar 2006 at 22:42

look here - http://www.robgalbraith.com/bins/multi_page.asp?cid=6007-6816

danrow_99 · 31 Mar 2006 at 22:48

Tomsk said:
look here - http://www.robgalbraith.com/bins/multi_page.asp?cid=6007-6816

Thanks, almost perfect. Sadly I think it's a bit out of date, doesn't mention the newer 133 cards as far as I can see...

Tomsk · 31 Mar 2006 at 23:49

danrow_99 said:
Thanks, almost perfect. Sadly I think it's a bit out of date, doesn't mention the newer 133 cards as far as I can see...

If you read between the lines, it seems the D70 maxes out at around 30x speed (1x speed is 150K/sec)

danrow_99 · 1 Apr 2006 at 01:25

Tomsk said:
If you read between the lines, it seems the D70 maxes out at around 30x speed (1x speed is 150K/sec)

I have read that the performance in continuous shooting mode is affected significantly by the speed of the media. With my Micro Drive I can only take 3 shots in a row before a pause of about 20 seconds or so. I'm sure I've read several times that the Nikon D70 is capable of shooting about 9 consecutive maximum quality (c. 6MB) NEF images in continuous shooting mode if the media is fast enough.

Does anyone know if this is true?

mrk · 1 Apr 2006 at 02:00

danrow_99 said:
I have read that the performance in continuous shooting mode is affected significantly by the speed of the media. With my Micro Drive I can only take 3 shots in a row before a pause of about 20 seconds or so. I'm sure I've read several times that the Nikon D70 is capable of shooting about 9 consecutive maximum quality (c. 6MB) NEF images in continuous shooting mode if the media is fast enough.

Does anyone know if this is true?

I used iPro 2GB 40x and Kingston Pro 60x 1GB cards on the d70 and could only shoot 3 RAW files before the buffer filled and you had to wait until the buffer cleared before being able to shoot again.

jhmaeng · 1 Apr 2006 at 03:05

With the Sandisk Ultra II, I'm able to take a burst of 4 RAW+JPEG shots, and then keep shooting at 1fps continuously thereafter (with seemingly no limit at 1fps)

The buffer clears itself in the background while the new images are being captured, so (in my experience) it's not necessary to wait until the buffer is empty.

Having said that, the D70 doesn't have the necessary protocol to take advantage of the very fastest speed (not to mention a generally slower processing engine compared to D200/D2) so getting 133x cards isn't entirely necessary.

morgan · 1 Apr 2006 at 08:20

fastest recognised card in most tests is still the sandisk extreme 3's. Its what I have always used. might pay you to see my sig

Tonks · 1 Apr 2006 at 17:40

Morgan, This is what I see when I try to follow your link:

Tonks, you do not have permission to access this page. This could be due to one of several reasons:

Your user account may not have sufficient privileges to access this page. Are you trying to edit someone else's post, access administrative features or some other privileged system?
If you are trying to post, the administrator may have disabled your account, or it may be awaiting activation.

Just thought you'd like to know

TRiP · 1 Apr 2006 at 18:28

there aren't any cameras out there that will write at 133x. the high speed cards are designed mostly for fast transfer to a pc.

jhmaeng · 1 Apr 2006 at 18:31

morgan said:
fastest recognised card in most tests is still the sandisk extreme 3's.

You're correct of course, but there's really very little difference in the performance of ExtremeIII and UltraII on the D70 which is what the OP was asking. So unless he will be upgrading soon to a fully compatible body such as the D2X and the D200, I wouldn't have thought it's necessary to fork out an extra 15-25% in price for the ExtremeIII.

TRiP said:
there aren't any cameras out there that will write at 133x. the high speed cards are designed mostly for fast transfer to a pc.

Although the cameras might not utilise the full 20MB/s, the 133x speed cards tend to be noticeably faster on the fully supported camera bodies than 66x cards.

divine` · 1 Apr 2006 at 18:36

jhmaeng said:
With the Sandisk Ultra II, I'm able to take a burst of 4 RAW+JPEG shots, and then keep shooting at 1fps continuously thereafter

I get the same with my plain bog standard Sandisk 512MB. No Ultra Extremeness involved