singleviking Loc: Lake Sebu Eco Park, Philippines

Your specific camera's instruction manual will tell what speed requirements are minimum for your camera. The speed of the SD card should be related to the to the DSP speed of your camera's system. Faster cards will function fine but you're spending money on speedy memory that can not be utilized. There's also a limit that some cameras have for the size of acceptable SD cards, so be sure to check this as well.

Bear2 Loc: Southeast,, MI

I looked in my camera manual for SD card write or any kind of speed, and also my Magic Lantern guide re same and could not find write speed for my D7000. I found pages of capacities in both manuals relating to number of images per size/per card MBs, but nothing re write speed.

darkmanCANADA Loc: Calgary, AB Canada

Look at the beginning of this thread:

http://www.uglyhedgehog.com/t-38873-1.html

jerryc41 Loc: Catskill Mts of NY

Look at page 319 in your manual. "Class 6 or faster."

Bear2 Loc: Southeast,, MI

Thank you. Proviously looked at 319 & 320, but I guess only the charts.

planepics Loc: St. Louis burbs, but originally Chicago burbs

So far, there is some good info...think I will keep this thread for a while. I just e-mailed Sony tech support about my A330. Any info I found only referenced buffer times using this card or that card. For my Alaskan trip, I want to buy a couple 32GB cards and shoot AW + JPEG (even though I normally only shoot JPEG) and don't want to get a really fast card if my camera is really slow. I hope I asked the right question when I asked what the camera's write speed was. I currently own a 4 GB, class 6 and an 8 GB, class 4 card. I think what a really need is a new camera!! ;)

I just noticed that the chart in the manual for my A330 only goes up to 16 GB cards. Could that mean that the camera is not capable of a bigger card or just that larger cards hadn't been invented yet? Never mind...just found a different page that said that 32 GB SD cards have been confirmed to work with my camera.

Bobgood1 Loc: Indianapolis, IN

My D-70 owners manual says use Sandisk. Most stores in my area not carrying " Compactflash." The last one I bought was 30 MB/s*

planepics Loc: St. Louis burbs, but originally Chicago burbs

I just heard back from Sony. Here is the bulk of what they said. It's a pretty good explanation.

"I understand that you have inquiries about the camera's write speed when used with different SDHC class speeds.

The camera's write speed is an unpublished specification. However, your DSLR-A330 is tested and guaranteed to work with SDHC cards (Class 4 up to Class 10) from 2GB up to 32GB.

Speeds of SDHC cards are written as "Class" and is specified on the card itself. For instance, if the SD card is rated Class 6, it means that the minimum write speed of the card is 6MB per second whereas Class 10 has a minimum write speed of 10MB per second. The camera may experience a lag between taking photos if using an SDHC card with a lower class rating."

I'm asking myself now if 32 GB would be overkill. I could get 800 pics on each 16 GB card RAW + JPEG (or just under 4K JPEG only). I haven't decided whether or not to take my laptop with me on my cruise to download and look at the pics. I have a portable hard drive, but I wouldn't be able to look at the pics for over a week if I did that (even if I could figure out how to do that just using the camera)

singleviking Loc: Lake Sebu Eco Park, Philippines

Thank goodness for B&H and those brown delivery trucks. B&H will know exactly what your camera can use as well as if there is some card size restrictions. They're friendly folks that really know their stuff and won't lead you astray.

minustide Loc: San Francisco

I use own a Ferrari and driving it at 45 mph was a blast! Anyway not withstanding your point, I use a an Extreme Pro-95mb/s on my 6d when shooting raw because it works best. MY bad- I should have included the quote I responded to.

darkmanCANADA Loc: Calgary, AB Canada

I just went on a 10 day holiday and shot 2500+ photos in RAW and almost hit 30GB. Memory is cheap and if you run out on holidays you probably won't find a good quality card if you are out of the country. I currently own 6 32GB cards of varying speeds. Carrying a laptop versus carrying 6 cards is your choice. I choose to travel light.

darkmanCANADA Loc: Calgary, AB Canada

This too would be lighter than a laptop and you could view your images: http://www.nextodi.com/product/en_nd2730.html

CSI Dave Loc: Arizona

I agree, but you'll need to have a USB 3.0 port and card reader to take full advantage. It cost me around $35 to upgrade to 3.0 and now the card to PC transfers are SO much faster! Highly recommended.

jimmya Loc: Phoenix

Actually the only place that kind of speed is needed is with HD video's huge data stream. People often gripe about their cameras shutting down "automatically", taking "so long" to record the last take of video. That's all because of slow cards.

They are needed for video but not stills. In the SD HC line class 4 is just fine for my Rebel cameras doing stills.

jadeast Loc: Virginia

This From Canon on the SX40HS
Your camera will accept both MMC (MultiMedia Cards) and SD (Secure
Digital) cards. This includes newer SDHC memory cards that are over
2GB. Utilizing the newer SDHC or High Capacity cards, your camera
should be able to accept any size cards available on the market today as
well as into the future, up to 2TB. Even though memory cards do not
come in capacities as high as a terabyte, the camera is capable of
accessing that amount of memory.
The read/write speed of the camera to the card is an unavailable
specification. However, since our cameras write to a buffer and then to
the card, the read/write speed of the memory card will not effect the
camera in a noticeable way. Outside of lab testing, you will not see
any gain in speed or decrease in function by purchasing a faster or
slower speed memory card. SD Speed Class 6 or higher cards are
recommended for best results recording video or continuous shooting.