LEGALDR Loc: Southern California

I researched the UHH postings on Read-Write speeds of SD cards. Last input was 1 1/2 years ago. I am sure that technology has made some advances. I want the fastest R/W speeds to match a 7 fps burst rate. I have the latest firmware loaded on my K-5. Any advice? Thanks in advance.

haze63 Loc: Tiffin Ohio

Best site I found for this is www.cameramemoryspeed.com you can look up a specific camera and it will show you the read write speed for different card for that camera

blackest Loc: Ireland

There is 2 sides to this the speed the card can be written too and the speed the camera can write.

http://www.pentaxforums.com/forums/115-pentax-k-5/190248-whats-fastest-sdhc-card-k5-can-take-advantage.html

To summarize the discussion the k5 can write out at around 20MB a second, and a class 10 card will be fine at that speed. Even if there was a card 10x faster which there maybe, I haven't looked, it is limited by the camera not the card slower than class 10 might slow things down but most of what you would buy today would be class 10 or better.

The limiting factor with burst really is buffer size so if maximum shots to fill the buffer is your concern shoot jpeg, followed by raw, followed by both.
I generally shoot just raw these days as its easiest to correct white balance for 1. Lightroom is pretty good at producing jpegs quite quickly. recently i was shooting indoors and my shots either used flash or the ambient florescent lighting by filtering on flash or no flash i split into two basic groups and corrected for flash with the flash group and florescent for the second. So i don't see an advantage to shooting raw + jpeg.

it is your choice how you choose to fill the buffer, it is a common problem with most camera's some have bigger buffers than others.

rjaywallace Loc: Wisconsin

Have you thought about simply going to the SanDisk website?

tsilva Loc: Arizona

why in hell would you come here??? as stated, go the mfg websites or use google, yahoo, bing or any of the other WORLD WIDE web search sites. you will get more responses than you can read in your remaining lifetime. (example for google only - About 333,000 results (0.36 seconds)

LEGALDR Loc: Southern California

I did. I thought that the Hog Pen might have some information based on experience.

Dngallagher Loc: Wilmington De.

As was mentioned above, best site I have seen is http://www.cameramemoryspeed.com/ because they list real world tests with different cards and different cameras, and provide links and prices for the cards.

In my mind, using the CLASS identifier is worthless as the class defines the MINIMUM speed the card is good for, not the actual speed (depending on your camera)

For example a class 10 card is good for 10 mb per second at least, but it could be, and probably is good for faster speeds.

In my Nikon D7100, I use a set of Samsung Pro 32 GB cards that are good for almost 70 mbs - why would I want to go slower? ;) Faster cards did speed up my buffer slow down and sped up burst shooting with the faster cards.

Also, most cards are rated for READ speed, and the WRITE speed is often half of the rated read speed, so it can get pretty interesting and important to know more than just what the owners manual says about cards - besides, owners manuals are often years old and not updated, while new technology in cards comes along every few months.

I am pretty sure when I was looking for cards, the Samsung Pro cards were like 19.99 each, so they were about the fastest for the buck at that time.

Dngallagher Loc: Wilmington De.

Excellent site in my opinion!

blackest Loc: Ireland

http://www.cameramemoryspeed.com/pentax-k-3-ii/fastest-sd-card-comparison-test/ The only pentax test

However the figures would be different for the k5. From the table of cards most performed similarly a few were awful price doesnt necessarily rate to speed.

SharpShooter Loc: NorCal

This has been discussed here as recently as a month or so ago.
But 7fps, unless it's at 50mp is actually pretty slow.
Use the recommendations in your manual, any faster than that is just throwing money away but when it comes to memory cards, throwing money away seems to be a favorite past-time here!!! LoL
SS

danoliver Loc: South Central Kentucky

Why in Hell don't you keep your mouth shut if you have nothing positive to add !

TriX Loc: Raleigh, NC

I'd recommend the aforementioned test site as well. Also use the search function for recent threads on the subject. One recent thread was from a D7200 user who doubled the number of shots before filling the buffer in a burst by moving to a faster card. Note that there are several parts to the performance issue: how fast can the camera move data from the sensor to the buffer (until it fills), and how fast can the data be processed and written to the card allowing more unused space in the buffer so shooting can resume. Also note that whether you write JPEG or raw or both can dramatically affect the max number of shots in a burst before filling the buffer.

Specs like class 10 tell you nothing useful as they only denote the minimum speed the card meets. Likewise, most cards are stamped with and advertise only read speed, which tells you nothing about write performance - you need to look up the actual specs or go to the test site to get the data. Also, the camera manual can be both out of date and very unspecific - it usually only specs a class of cards and the max burst size vs the type of image stored, not the speed at which the camera is capable of writing to the buffer or the card.

Finally, I'd just note that if you shop carefully, there's often not a lot of difference in price between a high performance card and a slower one; and even if you don't need all the write speed, the faster read speed will allow faster download assuming your computer can support it. It also provides performance that can be used in the future if you move to a body that writes faster and the assurance that you're getting max performance in the event you can't accurately characterize your camera's write performance from the specs which is often the case.

Dngallagher Loc: Wilmington De.

texaseve Loc: TX, NC and NH

Why is it necessary for some to be so rude here? It is not like you have so much to do..... or you wouldn't be here reading what is in this forum. I appreciate the folks who are patient and give a decent answer or opinion even if it has been mentioned before. THANK YOU!

LFingar Loc: Claverack, NY

What are your camera's requirements? Exceeding those requirements isn't going to help your burst rate. About the only thing a faster card will do for you is speed up your download, provided you are removing the card from your camera and reading it with your computer. Unless you have huge downloads or are constantly in a big hurry, even that is not something to worry about. The people who built your camera know what it needs to meet it's performance specs.