sd card seconds (1 Viewer)

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woodhornbirder

Well-known member

• Oct 7, 2016

• #1

any photographers upgraded recently?

misplaced one my old cameras which had a 16gb card in.

atmo only got 8gb in my bridge camera which is too small really.

looking for cheap offcasts.....

am not hard core photographer, but would like to try and grab the odd vid of birds i spot.

what sort of sizes are normal now? 32gb and higher?

what about data transfer speeds on cards, whats minimal rate i should look for ?

 

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etudiant

Registered User

Supporter

• Oct 8, 2016

• #2

Don't know about the situation in the UK, but here in the US 8GB is probably the cheapest SD card now available. Smaller sizes are out of production perhaps, so they are pricier on Amazon than the 8GB versions.
A good 32GB Class 10/UHS-1 SD card is now about $12, that is about the minimum for video. The faster UHS-3 (95MB/sec rated) version is almost twice the price, but should cope with most video demands.

 

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woodhornbirder

Well-known member

• Oct 8, 2016

• #3

do these cards suffer from data corruption after a certain time period? bad sectors or however they are formatted?

 

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etudiant

Registered User

Supporter

• Oct 8, 2016

• #4

woodhornbirder said:

do these cards suffer from data corruption after a certain time period? bad sectors or however they are formatted?

Click to expand...

I've not seen any studies, but the SD Association standard is for data stored on them to last 10 years. High temperature and humidity degrade the storage, so treat the cards with reasonable care. They are tough enough to survive a wash cycle. o

I get a new card for each trip I take. After the trip, I download the pictures, but keep the card with a description as a separate backup. That avoids confusion. The modest extra cost is well worth it imho.

Only use brand name cards such as San Disk, their Extreme Pro series is lifetime warrantied and has excellent reviews on Amazon.

 

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seaspirit

Well-known member

• Oct 8, 2016

• #5

Slower SD cards (30MB/s) are less expensive than fast ones (95 MB/s).
Faster cards offer only an advantage if the camera is able to move data with this higher speed from the camera's buffer to the card. Otherwise its like putting formula 1 tires on a regular VW beetle. It's still a beetle and not going faster than before. The ones with ~ 30MB/s will be OK for most casual shooter

What size SD card? Depends also on camera and the file size it produces, but more on how trigger happy one is. Given the current prices I wouldn't go smaller than 16GB, likely a 32GB would be my choice for a bridge cam.

 

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Dave Williams

Well-known member

• Oct 8, 2016

• #6

When choosing a memory card it's the write speed that's important. They usually advertise the read speed which in most cases is higher, sometimes considerably so. If you don't have a decent write speed the camera buffer soon fills and you can't take another shot until it clears some space.
Also depends of course on the capability of the camera.The flagship top of the range models can almost shoot indefinitely if they have the fastest cards in them.

 

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etudiant

Registered User

Supporter

• Oct 9, 2016

• #7

Dave Williams said:

When choosing a memory card it's the write speed that's important. They usually advertise the read speed which in most cases is higher, sometimes considerably so. If you don't have a decent write speed the camera buffer soon fills and you can't take another shot until it clears some space.
Also depends of course on the capability of the camera.The flagship top of the range models can almost shoot indefinitely if they have the fastest cards in them.

Click to expand...

Amen to that, write speed is the key.
UHS-1 minimum is 10 MB/sec for continuous writing, UHS-3 is 30MB/sec.
Read ratings are often 3-5x greater and are what is highlighted on the card.
Do note that 10MB/sec is a pretty good write speed which many older cameras would struggle to achieve.