How important is CF speed?

frosty03

frosty03

frosty03

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Just about to buy some memory (4gb CF cards) for my D200.

How important is the speeds of the CF card? I presume it will only affect how fast you can shoot, once you saturate the camera buffer? I dont really take a lot of continuous shots, so was planning to save by buying the "slower" cards.

Are the brands important? Dont want to pay for "cheaper" brands that may die after taking some important shots. Or are they all the same?
 
Yeah, how fast you can shoot, once you saturate the camera buffer. But it also effects the speed of playback when you are flicking through shots you've taken and the download time from the card to your computer. This last reason is the most important from my point of view.
 
clv101 said:
Yeah, how fast you can shoot, once you saturate the camera buffer. But it also effects the speed of playback when you are flicking through shots you've taken and the download time from the card to your computer. This last reason is the most important from my point of view.
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I'm still quite a noob at this.... going from my "perception", which may be totally off....

I take it that Sandisk is good reliability wise? Kingston makes "ok" computer memory, take it they'll be ok too?

Lexar,transcend, fuji and dane-electric to avoid?
 
depends on the camera... in canon terms (sorry don't know much about nikon) if you have a XXXD or XXD series you're perfectly fine with Sandisk Extreme III cards, if you have a 5D or better you will be able to take advantage of the extra speed of the Extreme IV cards...

But yeah, go with Sandisk is my advice, I've been using the extreme cards for years and never had a single problem ;)
 
I've only ever used Sandisk Extreme in my 20D for the last ~4 years, worked perfect. I expect other cards would also work but I can only recommend Sandisk Extreme from personal experience.
 
The D200 has something like a 25 shot buffer for RAWs, so unless you're shooting continuously a lot you won't need a fast card.

Having said that I always buy fast cards so that I can transfer to PC quickly using a dedicated card reader (rather than the camera).
 
frosty03 said:
I'm still quite a noob at this.... going from my "perception", which may be totally off....

Lexar,transcend, fuji and dane-electric to avoid?
Click to expand...
Lexar is almost as good as SanDisk and occasionally better, better than Kingston. I've not had any problems with Transcend, Dane-Elec or Fuji in SDHC form but SanDisk always gives you that 'ring of confidence'... Just don't buy any of them from the auction site as there are many fakes around.
 
Pretty much any 133x + card from any of the brands listed will be fine for most people, I use a combination of Kingston 133x and Sandisk Ultra II without any problems.
 
I only use 300x Lexar CF cards and in my D3 its lighting fast but the reason I use them is that used with my Lexar Firewire 800 card reader you get very fast transfer speeds, think a 8GB card will take a few minutes to transfer over to my Mac.
 
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