memory card speeds

[Simonnn]

I think im pretty decided on getting a canon 400d now, one thing I'd like to know is what to do about storage. It takes compact flash and I'd like to get a 2gb card, prices for these seem to range from £25 upto £100. Apparently the 400d can do a burst of 27 JPEG or 10 RAW images at three frames per second. Is the type of card I get going to effect this, I know cards have speeds but what would I require to stop the card effecting this. Would I experience problems with the cheaper memory?

Thanks

Simon

 

[rpstewart]

The card type will not affect the number of shots you can fit in the buffer, it'll still be 27 or 10 (you might lose 1 or 2 with high ISOs/complex scenes due to file sizes). What the card will affect is how quickly you can take the 28th & 29th shots (or 11th & 12th with RAW) as the camera will start writing to the card as soon as the first shot is in the buffer. At 3 frames per second in JPEG you're looking at about 12-14Mb/s of data to be written which is about twice what the fastest CF cards will do so roughly speaking a quick card will allow you to shoot maybe as many as 40 JPEGs at 3fps before it chokes at which point the camera will drop down to shooting a frame whenever there's space in the buffer. With RAW you might get 11, maybe 12 before the frame rate drops to about one every 2s.

Obviously slower memory means fewer shots before the buffer fills and longer to fully flush it.

 

[Simonnn]

Oh right, thanks for clearing that up