Mike Holmes wrote:
I have a Conon 90D and am looking to purchase a 64 or 32 card for use. I have tried "search" but all of the answers are 5 to 10 years old. I do not take a lot of pictures per outing 100 to 500. It is mostly wildlife and shot at 11 fps and raw. I will probably only purchase two cards so cost is not important. Thanks for your input
Google is your friend... took me 5 seconds to find:
https://alikgriffin.com/best-memory-cards-canon-90d/Supposedly 90D needs a card that can write at 90MBsec or faster. However, even if a card writes a little slower than that you would only ever see any slowdown in performance if shooting continuously and exceeding the camera's built-in buffer, which is claimed to be able to handle 58 JPEGs or 25 RAW, I think. At the camera's fastest frame rate of 11 fps, that would be a four second burst of JPEGs or slightly over 2 sec burst of RAW image files. Actually bursts a little longer than these are possible, because some of the files being produced are being offloaded to the memory card at a rate of 90MBsec., at the same time that new ones are being added to the buffer. You state you don't shoot a whole lot of images.... "100 to 500 per outing". So I doubt you are using the high frame rate very much. (I regularly shoot 1500 to 5000 per outing at sporting events, shooting with cameras that max out at 10 fps).
The memory card just needs to keep up as best as possible with that buffer.... emptying it at the 90MBsec the camera is capable of doing. For many UHS-1 cards, this will be a challenge. A lot of the best cards of that type max out close to 90MBsec. Virtually all UHS-II memory cards more than exceed that write speed, so are the best bet since the 90D supports them.
Note: Be sure to look carefully at the specs.... very often the stated card speed is actually its read speed, which is nearly always faster than its write speed... read speed effects downloads, while write speeds effect in-camera performance.
I do not agree that it's a "waste of money" to buy a card faster than your camera's max write speed. I understand that argument, but the reason I disagree is that I'm still using memory cards I bought years ago for use in earlier camera models. Because I bought "better" cards than were needed at that time, they're still serving very well many years later in newer, faster writing cameras. If I had instead bought slightly less expensive cards that more closely matched the top speed of those old models, I would have also had to buy new memory cards when I upgraded cameras, to get full use out of those cameras. But since I "over-bought" years ago I was able to just keep using the memory cards I already had.
I largely stick with Sandisk and Lexar memory cards. I've also used Sony in the past, without any problem. ProGrade is a new brand created by former Lexar folks and might be good, too. The Lexar brand was great back when Micron owned it, but may have slipped when it was sold. I think its probably now good again, but there was a stretch when it was "iffy".
I avoid many of the others.... especially brands like Kodak, Polaroid, Duracell, Delkin and camera branded like Canon, Nikon, and so on.
Kodak etc. are outsourced. Those companies don't make the memory themselves. They buy it from someone else. Who knows who actually makes it. While some of it is probably good... maybe even great... the next batch sporting the same label might be from a completely different manufacturer and awful. So it's a roll of the dice with this type of memory.
Canon, etc. camera-branded is also outsourced (Sony may be an exception, because they actually do make memory). It's probably medium grade stuff and held to a reasonably good standard before the camera maker will put their name on it, but it's also usually marked way up to premium quality prices. You can see this in other accessories such as filters, too.