Does the M8 need the faster SD Cards?

[jimbobuk]

I'm preparing for a long trip away with the M8 (unless i relent and get a D3 and want to take that for a spin) and am about to buy a set of SD cards so that i can be sure i wont fill them up. I am just wondering if there is any point buying sandisk Ultra/Extreme or equivelant, or whether even the basic sandisk card would be sufficient.. 2gig is an ok max card size for me, tho it'd be nice if it went higher... but i'm with everyone else in being happier about spreading your photos across multiple cards so that 1 failing isn't as tragic as losing everything.

What are folks thoughts on this? The shot to shot performance of the M8 isn't exactly screaming but its nice, versus my R-D1 to be able to grab a few one after the other.. is this going to get effected by using the slower sandisks, or do they seem to have plenty of bandwidth to spare?

Cheers

Jim

 

[Roger Hicks]

Dear Jim,

Put it this way: I now buy only the faster ones, because I'm pretty sure I see a difference. I've not done formal tests, but informally, the difference does seem significant.

Cheers,

R.

 

[Mike Ip]

I dunno. I use the extremes and still have significant shot lag. It almost makes the 'C' function unusable. Of course I shoot Raw + JPEG, and I'm sure that has something to do with it.

 

[Roger Hicks]

I dunno. I use the extremes and still have significant shot lag. It almost makes the 'C' function unusable. Of course I shoot Raw + JPEG, and I'm sure that has something to do with it.

Dear Mike,

I find that it doesn't matter on JPEG only (which I very seldom shoot), but that it does matter with DNG (RAW) which is what I normally shoot. the effect must be even greater with JPEG + DNG but I very seldom shoot that either.

Cheers,

R.

 

[Bob Parsons]

I dunno. I use the extremes and still have significant shot lag. It almost makes the 'C' function unusable. Of course I shoot Raw + JPEG, and I'm sure that has something to do with it.

Yes, the M8 is much faster if you shoot DNG only.

For high capacity storage I use Transcend 4GB 150x SD compatible cards TS4GSD150. These are not SDHC but a compatible variant on the SD specification enabling storage greater than 2GB. I have 8 of them and use them in the M8 without problems.

Bob.

 

[Hacker]

It also matters when you transfer from the storage disk (SD Card) to the computer.

 

[Ben Z]

I have some Sandisk Extreme-III 2GB and also a few Kingston (whatever their fastest type is called). I've never had to wait while the M8 wrote to the card. As slow as the continuous shooting rate is on the M8 I can't see it could be a problem. My 20D can shoot 5FPS and the same kind of card (but in CF) never lags either. Of course the buffers are probably different size. So I have no need of faster cards or SDHC. Actually the # of times I've used continuous is rare. I shoot my M8 like my M6, and the # of times I put the motor on my M6 I could count on one hand.