Why would I want a high speed flash card?

[Fire14]

I keep seeing high speed flash cards advertised in sun ads. Why would I want one vs normal one?

[tmt martins]

You can take your Pics faster.

With HS it loads the photo onto the card faster thus giving you faster times for your next Pics.

I think they download faster as well but not sure on that one

[Fire14]

Thanks for the reply as for download faster I'm on dial up and wishing for high speed so for me high speed internet is faster:)

[mhutchinson]

You can take your Pics faster.


This is only true to a point. As an example my Canon 20D operates between 12X-24X on the write side (Canon wouldn't give the exact speed). So to get a 40X, 80X, or 133X would not gain anything over the camera max speed within the range. If you compare it to a card with 4X, 8X, or 10X ... then yes you will see a quicker writing of your images freeing the camera's buffer area. In burst modes (if available) you should see that you will be able to take more in the burst. Your camera manufacturer should be able to give you a ballpark on internal write speed.

The major advantage to these faster cards is unloading images from the cards to the PC's and reading the cards while reviewing the pictures on your camera. It will take significantly less time to view/copy/download images from a faster card than that of a standard speed card. This is the reason why I buy faster cards.

Mike

[tmt martins]

Thanks Mike

I knew I was in the ballpark but someone could explain it better.

[bluetinkdust]

I was wondering that also, thanks :)

[ducklite]

They are especially useful if you are photographing something like sports or live performance where you might want to take a large number of rapid fire photo's. Of course if your camera can't keep up, it won't do you much good.

My D-70 isn't supposed to be any faster than the SanDisc UltraII card, but I needed more CF cards and bought two Extreme III's. I have noticed a slight, very slight, speed increase and a bit less buffer congestion.

What I really need is a D2X, but that's going to have to wait for now. :goodvibes

Anne

[Fire14]

Thanks for all the replies I'm just happy to have a newer dig camera. I'm going from a 2.1mp to a 6.1 mp so I'm going way up in world and have lots of new stuff to play with on camera.